LIBRARY OF CO; SS.I 
aj. B R 4- TT 



Bo. .GftSfc 



UXITED STATES OF AMERICA. 1 






THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 



AND SOCIETY IN 1861. 



BY E. ^GTJIZOT. 



" However dazzling and specious may be the designs which some potentates form with 
the intention of despoiling others of their property, estates, and possessions, and however 
effectual and advantageous the pursuit and success of such plans may become, they will, 
nevertheless, in the end, produce more censure than praise, more weariness than satisfaction, 
more hatred than good-will, more repentance than enjoyment ; for such conquests must ever 
remain questionable "—Henri IV. Royal State Maxims. [Royal Economies (Memoirs of 
Sully), Collection Petitot, vol. iv. p. 2.] 




LONDON: 

RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, 

^ublisbcr in (Drbmarg to %tx tttajestu. 
1861. 



^at 
,&**- 



1 



LONDON 

FEINTED EY SPOTIIS^OOLE AND CO 
NETV-STBEET SQVABE 



CONTENTS. 



CHAP. PAGE 

I. "Why this was weitten .... 1 

II. The Christian Chuech . . . . 6 

III. Real Dangees of the Cheistian Chuech . 10 

IV. Of the Supeenatural . . . .16 
V. The Two Gods . . . . .25 

VI. The Cheistlan- Chuech and Religious Libeety 28 

VII. In what Religious Ltbeety consists . .32 

VIII. Of the Alliance between the State and the 

Chuech . . . . . .34 

IX. The Peotestant Chuech of Feance . .39 

X. The Catholic Chuech and Liberty . . 49 

XI. The Catholic Chuech in Italy . .59 

XII. The Catholic Chuech of Feance . . 64 

XIII. The Christian Churches . . .71 

XIV. Christian Societies . . . .77 
XV. The Law of Xations . . . .83 

XVI. The Independence of Italy .. . .87 



IV 



TABLE OF CONTEXTS. 



CHAP. 

XVII. Liberty in Italy . 

XVIII. Italian Unity 

XIX. The Papacy 

XX. Universal Suffrage in Italy 

XXL The Italian Confederacy 

XXII. France in Italy . 

XXIII. The Future of Europe — Oi 

our Hopes 

XXIV. Conclusion 





PAGE 




. 96 




. 103 




. 109 




. 121 




. 128 




. 141 


r Errors 


AND 




. 153 




. 204 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 

AND 

SOCIETY 



in 1861. 



CHAPTER I. 

WHY THIS WAS WRITTEN. 



I had no intention of writing what I now publish. 
Two personal incidents have imposed this duty on 
me. 

On the 20th of April last, when presiding at the 
public meeting of the Society for the Encouragement 
of Elementary Education amongst the Protestants of 
France, I said : — "A lamentable perturbation in- 
fects and afflicts a considerable portion of the great 
and general Christian Church. I say, a lamentable 
perturbation ; and by this phrase I express, and am 

B 



2 "WHY THIS WAS TTRITTEX. 

anxious to convey, ray individual sentiment. What- 
ever may be our disagreements, and even our sepa- 
rations, we are all Christians, and the brethren of all 
who avow the Christian faith. The security, the 
dignity, the liberty of all Christian Churches, closely 
concern Christianity in its extended sense. Chris- 
tianity at large suffers when the leading Churches 
suffer; the entire Christian edifice feels :ke blows 
directed, in these days, against any of the promi- 
nent buildings of which it is cornr. : ?ed. Under such 
trials, the whole of the great Christian Church de- 
mands our sympathy." 

These word- have been very differently received 
and interpreted. Many Catholics have warmly 
thanked me for using them. Many Protestants 
have vehemently blamed and expressed unea-iness 
at them. Some of my most intimate no- on- 
amongst the latter, have spoken of them with 
affectionate regret. 

Three months before, on the 24th of January, 
1861. when receiving, as president of the French 
Academy. Father Lacordaire. who had been elected 
a member. I had been led to advert to the even:- 
which agitate Italy, and used these words : — •* We 
have, for nearly half a century, beheld Italy in prey 



WHY THIS WAS WRITTEN. 3 

to commotions, invasions, and disorders resembling 
those which display themselves there at this mo- 
ment ; but then, at least, they appeared in their 
true character and features. A man who enjoyed 
much popular reputation, and whom the Liberals 
designated their chosen publicist,* when speaking 
of these and many other similar facts, qualified 
them as ' the spirit of usurpation and conquest,' 
and, under that title, wrote a work in their con-^ 
demnation. Have the same facts ceased to deserve 
the same name ? Have they changed their nature 
because it is no longer France who openly accom- 
plishes them on her own account, and appropriates 
the fruits to herself? Or, rather, have these vio- 
lences become lawful because to-day they are exer- 
cised in the name of democracy, and in virtue of 
what is called its will ? " 

A man of note in Italy, lately commissioner of 
King Victor Emmanuel in Tuscany, and now a deputy 
to the Italian parliament, M. Boncompagni, has done 
me the honour to address a letter to me in the 
a Bibliotheque Universelle " of Grenoaf, announcing 
others, and in which, with much moderation and 

* Mr. Benjamin Constant, 
f No. 40, April 20th, 1861, pp. 555-601. 
B 2 



4 WHY THIS WAS WMTTEK 

propriety, he disputes what I said before the 
Academy, and presents, under a totally different 
light, the events of which Italy is the theatre, their 
causes, their bearing, and their character. 

I do not propose to enter, either with my Protest- 
on: friends or my honourable Italian correspondent, 
into a direct discussion of their claims and com- 
plaints. I have argued much throughout my life : 
but argument was then with me a necessity ; 
eal action. I sought for immediate results, and we 
all endured the salutary weigh} :: the responsibility 
which that position imposes. When we speak to es ;_. 
other — not face to face, and in expectation of the 
adhesion we desire to obtain or the check we may be 
compelled to undergo — but from a distance. ar_ 
the freedom of : ditnde : when in place of having to 
decide, by a pressing debate, positive resolutions, we 
have only to criticise, at leisure, id-:- and " 
I attach Hide value to controversv. : a not in- 

clined to embark in it. It is a tournament in which 
minds may be displayed, not a combat in which des- 
tinies are at stake. Self-loves excite and stimulate 
themselves in such contests, each according to its 
bent ; while vanity is gratified, and triumphs much 
more than truth. But if I abstain from controversv 



WHY THIS WAS WRITTEN. 5 

with them. I feel too much respect for the religious 
anxieties of the Protestants and the patriotic de- 
mands of the Italians not to hold both as of the 
utmost importance, before the public and in com- 
munion with my own soul. I wish to answer by 
a clear and complete exposition of my idea : and I 
:his reply equally to them and to myself. I 
neither hope nor pretend to lead all to my own 
opinion : but I am most anxious to be understood by 
all. The moment, moreover, appears to me oppor- 
tune. The religious and the Italian question strongly 
occupy men's niinds, while facts present, for the mo- 
ment, an interval of respite and repose. The sudden 
death of the eminent statesman who he]d in his bold 
and skilful hands the thread of Italian events, has. 
if not arrested, at least slackened their course. Since 
the decease of M. de Cavour. the opposing parties 
watch each other, and wait with anxiety: nothing is 
renounced, but the attack is suspended, If my words 
contain truth, and truth seasonably uttered, the more 
it appears alone, calm, and disconnected from per- 
sonal debate, the greater will be its chances of a 
favourable reception. 



B 3 



CHAP. II. 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 



It is of the entire Christian Church that I think. It 
is to the whole Christian Church that I address my 
words. 

Is it that I attach no importance to the dissensions 
and ruptures which have destroyed unity in the 
Christian Church, and that, in my eyes, there is no 
essential difference between Catholics and Protestants, 
Lutherans and Calvinists, members .of the Church of 
England and Dissenters, simply because they are all 
Christians ? 

Or can it be that I believe in a reconciliation, in 
a fusion which would re-establish amongst Christians 
religious unity, and that I pursue this object ? 

Neither the one nor the other. 

I am a Protestant from conviction and by descent. 
While teaching me justice, sympathetic justice, to- 
wards all Christians, the experience of life and the 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 7 

study of history have confirmed me in the Church in 
which I was born. Without entering into questions 
of religious dogma, which would here be out of place, 
I feel convinced that, in spite of the commotions it 
has excited and the faults it has committed, the Ee- 
formation of the sixteenth century has rendered two 
immense services to the modern world : it has re- 
animated Christian faith, even as regards its ad- 
versaries ; it has impressed on European society, 
voluntarily or forcibly, a decisive movement towards 
liberty. 

I do not believe that a fusion of the different 
Christian communities, and the religious union of 
the Christian world are possible events, for they 
would be neither sincere nor permanent. In spiri- 
tual order, I estimate as lightly the deceitful 
unity of the transaction as the constrained unity of 
the persecution. When God created man reflecting 
and free, he did not surrender to him the power of 
decision as to what was or was not truth; but he 
made variety of convictions his condition on earth, 
as he gave him diversity of liberty as his right. The 
human race is devoted to toil and struggle in the 
search after truth ; not destined to repose in the 
bosom of truth. 

B 4 



8 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 

Nevertheless, I persist in using the expression, — 
the Christian Church. Whatever may have been, 
and may still continue to be, our schisms and con- 
tests, our prejudices and aversions — Catholics or 
Protestants, Episcopalians or Presbyterians, national 
Churches or independent sects — I would say that, 
indifferent as well as zealous believers, we have all 
one common religious origin ; we have all learned 
the same history, and have received from our parents, 
our teachers, and our associates, from the experience 
of life, and from the lessons of the school, the same 
impressions ; we have thence contracted certain ideas 
and simultaneous sentiments, present and powerful 
in our souls, even without our own consciousness. 
This civilisation, which under different forms and 
in unequal degrees has developed itself amongst all 
the nations of Europe, and which is in progress of 
subduing the world, is essentially Christian. Despite 
its intestine discords, the religious association which 
has held, and still holds in the history of human 
nature, such an important place, is, and will continue 
to be, — the Christian Church. We all call our- 
selves, now and ever, — ■ Christendom. In this term 
there is a moral and social unity which resists all 
differences, survives all contests, and binds all Chris- 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 9 

tians together, whether they assemble to join in 
prayer, to debate on the conditions of salvation, or to 
quarrel for superiority. 

He who attaches not a high value to this para- 
mount tie, and who, while professing Christianity, 
forgets Christendom, is ignorant of the great fact of 
our history, neglects a most important duty, and ex- 
poses his own cause, to-day, to a weighty peril. 



10 



CHAP. III. 

EEAL DANGERS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 

While Catholicism is menaced in its external esta- 
blishment, ail Christianity is exposed, in its founda- 
tion and essence, to attacks still more serious and 
dangers still more urgent. 

It belongs to intellectual order that such dangers 
should exhibit themselves. It is not against the 
Christian religion as a social institution — it is 
against the Christian faith itself that these attacks 
are directed. Materialists, pantheists, rationalists, 
historical critics, and sceptics, each with their own 
appropriate weapons, aim distinct, but simultaneous 
and continued, blov^s against dogmatic Christianity. 

These blows are by no means new. Many times 
before, especially from the fifteenth to the eighteenth 
century, Christianity has been exposed to and has 
effectively resisted them. It has had its days of 
strength and weakness, of zeal and languor, of bril- 



KEAL DAGGERS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 11 

liancy and decline. It has defended itself alter- 
nately by the power of tradition and transformation, 
and, above all, by its natural and innate virtue. It 
has stood erect through all changes of fortune ; it has 
survived innumerable wars. It will equally survive, 
I feel convinced, the war which is waged against it 
in the present day. But the evil of the war is great, 
even when the issue cannot be fatal. The minds of 
men suffer, society suffers, from the blows which 
Christianity receives, from its apparent weaknesses 
and from its wounds, although the latter are not 
mortal. It will not perish ; but it requires to be well 
acquainted with its dangers, to face them boldly, and 
to combine all its strength to subdue them. 

Amongst its adversaries there are some who invite 
this combination, and who, with a remnant of pious 
solicitude, feel uneasy at their own attacks. I read 
in an Essay by M. Edmund Scherer, entitled The 
Crisis of Protestantism*, the following paragraph : 
" They imagine that all difficulties are solved, and 
believe that they catch a glimpse of the religious 
future of humanity, in a species of Christian ra- 
tionalism, or of rational Christianity, which, without 

* Published in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 15th May, 1861, p. 
423. 



12 EEAL DAXGERS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 

excluding ardour, would leave to thought its full 
liberty. For my own part, I desire nothing better ; 
but I cannot refrain from asking, with some 
anxiety, whether Christian rationalism is indeed a 
religion. Is what remains in the crucible after the 
operation of analysis, really the essence of positive 
dogmas, or merely a caput mortuitm ? Does Chris- 
tianity, rendered transparent to the mind, conform- 
able to reason and conscience, still retain its inherent 
virtue ? Does it not resemble deism, and has it not 
the same meagreness and sterility ? Does not the 
power exercised by creeds reside in dogmatic formulas 
and in miraculous legends, as much as in their essen- 
tially religious contents ? Is there not always some- 
thing of superstition in true piety, and can true 
piety entirely dispense with those popular metaphy- 
sics, with that brilliant mythology, which is sought to 
be expelled from it ? The elements which you at- 
tempt to separate from religion, are they not the alloy 
without which the precious metal becomes unsuited 
to the rough practice of life ? Finally, when criti- 
cal censure has rejected the marvellous as useless, 
and tenets as irrational ; when the religious sentiment 
on the one hand, and exacting reason on the other, 
shall have penetrated faith and transformed it by 



REAL DANGERS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 13 

assimilation ; when no authority shall be recognised 
beyond that of individual conviction ; when man, in 
a word, having torn asunder all veils and pierced 
through all mysteries, shall contemplate, face to face, 
the Grod he seeks after, will he not find that this Grod 
is nothing more than man himself — a personification 
of the conscience and reason of humanity ? And 
will not religion, under the pretext of becoming more 
religious, cease to exist altogether ?" 

Another Protestant minister, a man of distin- 
guished ability, and sincere in spirit, M, Colani, has 
recently said, " I also entertain opinions and ideas 
which, acquired in the midst of the struggles of 
thought, have become singularly precious to me. 
Without doubt, I wish to see them shared by my 
brethren, and I feel even capable of sacrifices to 
expand them around me. Nevertheless, if it de- 
pended on my will to see them suddenly adopted by 
all the members of our church, I declare before Grod 
that I should restrain myself. For I distinguish 
between the Grospel and my opinions on the Grospel. 
The word of Christ, which is spirit and life, is suited 
to all ; it satisfies every intelligence, the highest as 
well as the least cultivated, the simplest and the 
most sublime ; it answers to every state of the soul ; 



14 REAL DANGERS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 

it is eternally true, because it addresses itself even 
to the substance of our nature. My ideas, my 
opinions on the Grospel, I believe to be sound ; but 
something tells me that they are imperfect, incom- 
plete ; that they are applicable to a particular state 
of mind; that experience will modify them; that if 
they satisfy me now, the time approaches when they 
will cease to do so entirely; and that, consequently, 
they can only really satisfy those who are in the 
same state with myself at this moment ; those who 
have the same tendencies, and the same intellectual 
wants. 5 '* 

In contemplating the honest anxiety which accom- 
panies such an animated attack, I feel a sentiment of 
melancholy esteem for the aggressors, and of con- 
fidence in the cause assailed. It thus appears that 
the rationalists and sceptics themselves question the 
conclusive merit of their reasoning, and of their 
doubts; they labour, as they say, to rationalize the 
Christian religion, and they tremble, lest in the 
effort the very essence of the religion should perish ! 

I have no desire to quote here other names ; but 
I feel persuaded that amongst the materialists, pan- 
theists, and historical critics, those who are serious 

* Le Lien, Number for the 4th of May, 1861. 



KEAL DAGGERS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 15 

and sincere, and undoubtedly many are so, would 
exhibit the same uneasiness if we could read their 
hearts. 

Whence does this uneasiness proceed ? Why such 
disquiet in so many elevated minds, in the midst of 
their own work ? It is that, according to the fine ex- 
pression of Montesquieu, they accomplish much more 
than they have undertaken or desired ? Under the 
blows they aim against the dogmas of Christianity 
the whole religious structure is shaken, the entire 
social edifice totters ; the empire, the very essence of 
religion, disappears ; the human soul feels itself dis- 
inherited, and ready to expire with its faith. 

I wish to probe and expose to light the deadly 
wounds inflicted on the Christian Church by these 
attacks, at once timid and violent, of its various 
adversaries, — the wounds in which the evil dwells 
and concentrates. There are two that take the lead. 



16 



CHAP. IV. 

OF THE SUPERNATURAL. 

All the attacks of which Christianity is at the present 
day the object, however they may differ in their 
nature and degree, proceed from one point and tend 
to the same end, — a denial of the supernatural in 
the destinies of man and of the world, the abolition 
of the miraculous element in the Christian religion, 
as in every other, in its history as in its dogmas. 

Materialists, pantheists, rationalists, sceptics, scho- 
lastic critics, some openly, others with reserve, all 
think and speak under the dominion of this idea, — 
that the world and man, moral and physical nature, 
are uniformly governed by general, permanent, and 
necessary laws, the course of which no special will 
has ever interfered with, or ever will interfere with, 
to suspend or modify. 

I do not here propose to discuss at full length this 
question which forms the basis of all religion; I 



OF THE SUPERNATURAL. 17 

merely wish to submit to the declared enemies of 
supernatural agency two observations, or, to speak 
more correctly, two facts, which, according to my 
idea, decide the point. 

It is upon a natural belief in the supernatural, on 
an innate instinct of the supernatural, that all 
religion is founded. I do not say all idea of religion, 
but all positive, practical, powerful, durable, and 
popular religion. In all places, under all climates, 
in all epochs of history, under all degrees of civiliza- 
tion, man carries within himself this sentiment, I 
should rather say this pre-sentiment, that the world 
he looks upon, the order in the bosom of which he 
lives, the facts which succeed each other regularly 
and constantly around him do not comprise, within 
themselves, everything ; in vain does he make from 
day to day, in this vast whole, discoveries and con- 
quests ; in vain does he observe and learnedly verify 
the permanent laws which preside there ; his imagi- 
nation does not confine itself within this universe 
submitted to his science ; the spectacle fails to satisfy 
his soul, which plunges beyond it ; it seeks and ob- 
tains a glimpse of something else ; it desires, both for 
the universe and itself, other destinies and another 
master. 



18 OF THE SUPERNATURAL. 

Voltaire has said that u beyond all these heavens 
the Grod of the heavens dwells ;" and the God who is 
beyond all the heavens is not nature personified, he 
is the supernatural in person. It is to him that 
religions are addressed ; it is to place man in relation 
with him that they are founded. Without the in- 
stinctive faith of men in the supernatural, without 
their spontaneous and invincible impulse towards the 
supernatural, religion could not exist. 

Man is the only being in this lower world that 
prays. Amongst his moral instincts, there is none 
more natural, universal, and unconquerable than 
that of prayer. The child inclines to it with eager 
docility. The old man returns to it as to a refuge 
from decay and loneliness. Prayer ascends spon- 
taneously from the infant mouth which can scarcely 
murmur the name of Grod, and from the dying lips 
which no longer retain strength to utter it. 

Amongst all nations, whether eminent or obscure, 
civilized or barbarous, we meet, at every step, acts 
and forms of invocation. Wherever human beings 
exist, under particular circumstances, at specified 
hours, under the empire of certain impressions of 
the soul, eyes are raised, hands are joined together, 
knees are bent, to supplicate or to return thanks, 



OF THE SUPERNATURAL. 19 

to adore or to appease, with extasy or apprehension, 
publicly or in the recesses of the heart ; man ever 
turns to prayer as a last relief, to fill up the voids 
in his soul, or to enable him to bear the burdens of 
his destiny; when all resources fail, he seeks in 
prayer a support for his weakness, consolation for 
his distress, and hope for his enduring constancy. 

Xo one denies the moral and innate value of 
prayer, independently of its efficacy in its immediate 
object. From the act of praying alone, the soul 
derives relief, tranquillity, and strength : it experi- 
ences, in turning towards God, that feeling of a 
return to health and repose which expands over the 
body when it passes from a heavy and stormy air 
to a serene and pure atmosphere. God comes in 
aid of those who implore Him before they can know 
and without their knowing that he has listened to 
their supplication. 

Will He listen to them ? What is the external 
and conclusive efficacy of prayer ? Herein lies the 
mystery, the impenetrable mystery, of the designs 
and actions of God on all his creatures. We know 
that, whether in reference to our external or internal 
life, it is not we alone who regulate it according to 
our own thoughts and wishes. All the names that 

C 2 



20 OF THE SUPERXATUEAL. 

we apply to that portion of our destiny which comes 
not from ourselves. — chance, fortune, star, nature, 
fatality — are nothing more than veils thrown over 
our ignorant impiety. When we speak thus, we 
refuse to see God where he is. Beyond the narrow 
sphere within which the power and actions of man 
are restrained, it is God who reigns and acts. There 
is in the natural and universal action of prayer a 
natural and universal faith in this permanent and 
ever free action of God over man and his destiny. 
K We are labourers with God/ 1 says St. Paul, la- 
bourers with God. both in the work of the general 
destinies of the human race and in that of our 
individual destiny, present and future. This is what 
prayer reveals to lis on the tie which unites man to 
God ; but here our light pauses : •'•' God's ways are 
not our ways :" we walk in them without knowing 
them : to believe without beholding, and to pray 
without foreknowing, is the condition which God 
has prescribed to man in this world, with respect to 
all that exceeds its limits. Faith and a religious 
life consist in the conviction and acceptance of this 
supernatural arrangement. 

In this sense. ML Edmond Scherer is right when 
he doubts whether " rationalistic Christianitv is or 



OF THE SUPERNATURAL. 21 

ever can be a religion." And why has M. Jules 
Simon, who bows before Grod with such heartfelt 
respect, entitled his book Natural Religion ? He 
ought rather to have called it Religious Philosophy. 
Philosophy pursues and reaches some of the grand 
ideas on which religion founds itself: but by the 
nature of its proceedings, and the limits of its 
domain^Ki^lias never founded, and never can found, 
a religion. To speak exactly, there is no such thing 
as natural religion; for as soon as you abolish the 
supernatural, religion also disappears. 

No one will attempt to deny that this instinctive 
belief in the supernatural, the source of religion, 
may be, and often is also, the source of an infinity 
of errors and superstitions; and that they, in their 
turn, are productive of many evils. In this, as in 
all other cases, it is the condition of man that good 
and evil mingle incessantly in his destinies and 
works, as in himself; but it does not follow from 
this inevitable mixture that our prevailing instincts 
are irrational, and bewilder while they exalt us. 
Whatever may be our wanderings under this excite- 
ment, it is certain that the supernatural belongs to 
the natural faith of man, and forms the sine qua 

C 3 



22 OF THE SUPERNATURAL. 

non condition,, the true object, the very essence of 
religion. 

I come now to a second pointy or I ought rather 
to say, a second fact, which demands, as I think, 
the full attention of the adversaries of the super- 
natural. 

It is admitted, and proved by science, that our 
globe has not always been in the state in which it is 
at present ; that at various and undetermined epochs 
it has undergone revolutions and transformations 
which have changed its face, its physical system, its 
population ; that man, in particular, has not always 
existed upon it, and that in several of the successive 
conditions through which it has passed, it was im- 
possible that he could have existed. 

How, then, did he arrive there ? • By what means 
and through what power has the human race com- 
menced upon earth ? 

There can be but two explanations of man's origin : 
either he has been produced by the proper and in- 
nate labour of the natural forces of matter, or he is 
the work of a supernatural power, external to and 
superior to matter. His appearance here below re- 
quires one of two causes — spontaneous generation 
or creation. 



OF THE SUPERXATUEAL. 23 

But even admitting, what for my own part I dis- 
tinctly deny, spontaneous generation, this mode of 
origin could not produce, and never could have pro- 
duced anything but infant beings in the first hour 
and first state of commencing life. No one, I believe, 
has ever said, or is likely to say that, by virtue of 
spontaneous generation, man, or rather man and 
woman, the human pair, could have emanated or 
ever did emanate at once from the bosom of matter 
entirely formed and grown, in full possession of their 
stature, their strength, and all their faculties, as 
Greek paganism has made Minerva spring from the 
brain of Jupiter. 

It is, nevertheless, under this condition alone that, 
in appearing for the first time on earth, man could 
have lived or established himself there, or have 
founded the human race. Let us figure to ourselves 
the first born man in a state of early infancy, living 
but inert, unintelligent, helpless, incapable of sup- 
plying his own wants, trembling and moaning, with 
no mother to hear or nourish him. Yet this is the 
only first man which the system of spontaneous gene- 
ration can supply. 

Evidently, then, the other origin of the human 
race is alone admissible, and alone possible. The 

c 4 



24 OF THE SUPERNATURAL. 

supernatural fact of creation only can explain the 
first appearance of man in this lower world. 

Those, therefore, who deny and abolish the super- 
natural, abolish with the same blow all true religion ; 
and vainly do they triumph over the supernatural 
agency so frequently introduced into our world and 
history; they are compelled to pause before the 
supernatural cradle of humanity, unable to deliver 
man from it without the hand of Grod. 



25 



CHAP. V. 



THE TWO GODS. 



In addition to direct and declared war against the 
supernatural, another evil assails the Christian reli- 
gion in its very heart. 

Paganism, under all its forms, whether cosmological 
or mythological, mystical or poetical, has this essen- 
tial and common characteristic — that it is man him- 
self who becomes or makes Grod. We find in paganism 
the vague idea of a primitive and supreme deity, con- 
cealed afar off in the depths of the universe ; but the 
Grod or gods who are really the object of religion, 
who live in relation with man — the Grod or gods who 
are reverenced and implored, are nothing more than 
personifications of man or of nature ; human heroes, 
or great human faculties and passions ; the active 
forces of the universe elevated to the Divine condi- 
tion and to the honours of religious worship. In all 
these religions, the real and living G-od or gods who 



26 THE TWO GODS. 

preside over the destinies of man and of the world, 
are of natural origin and human creation. 

It is, on the contrary, the inherent and funda- 
mental feature of Christianity in its biblical cradle 
and throughout all its history, that Grod does not in 
any manner appear there through the medium of 
man or nature. The Grod of the Jews and Chris- 
tians is neither a personification of the forces of 
nature, of the faculties or passions of man, or of 
the heroes of the human race. He has created both 
man and nature ; he existed before them, and re- 
tains an essentially distinct and independent being. 
He is the original, only, and eternal Grod, self-sub- 
sistent, and at the same time active, present in all 
all times and places, governing and maintaining all 
that he has created, and to whom alone the faith 
and worship of his creatures is addressed. This is 
the true Grod. 

If this were the suitable place, I could readily 
show all that this inherent and fundamental charac- 
teristic of biblical and Christian religion comprises ; 
as the monuments of that religion declare, and as its 
followers believe, it is Grod himself who is therein 
revealed, who speaks and acts, who creates and go- 
verns the world. But I only desire at present to 



THE TTTO GODS. 27 

confront the two principles — the two Grods, if I may 
be allowed so to express myself — in which are in- 
cluded the double religious history of humanity : on 
the one side idolatry, on the other Christianity. 

This is the point we have now reached, and whither 
the wind of the age impels us. No attempt is made 
to bring us back to any specific form of the idolatry 
which elevated into Grod the heroes of the human 
race, the great faculties of man, or the forces of 
nature ; but we are called upon to abandon the Grod 
of the Bible and the Grospel — the' original, indepen- 
dent, personal, and distinct Deity, the creator of man 
and of the world ; and we are, at the same time, re- 
quired to accept for all religion an abstract Grod who 
is also an idol of human invention, for he is no other 
than man and the world confounded and erected 
into Grod by a science which believes itself pro- 
found, and would fain not be considered impious. In 
place of Christianity, its history and dogmas, those 
grand solutions of our destiny and sublime hopes of 
our nature, they offer to us pantheism, scepticism, 
and the embarrassments of human learning. 



CHAP. VI. 

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 

In presence of these attacks and dangers which 
assail the very essence of Christianity, all Christians 
have evidently a great common interest and duty. 
It is their general faith and religious country that 
they are called upon to defend. They dwell in 
different places ; but it is the fortress in which all 
are contained that is besieged. 

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when 
the Eeformation plunged the Christian world into 
a ferment, the fundamental dogmas of Christianity 
were not in question, and remained the same for 
all believers. They differed and quarrelled upon the 
Lord's Supper, the infallibility of the Pope, confes- 
sion, purgatory, and the celibacy of the priesthood ; 
but all believed in creation, in original sin, in the incar- 
nation, and redemption. They could surrender them- 
selves up to their various creeds without renouncing 



CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 29 

or endangering their common faith. They contested 
in the bosom of their religious country ; they neither 
exposed it to strangers, nor invited them to enter 
it. To-day, the stranger is everywhere at the gates 
of the Christian Church, prepared and eager to profit 
by its disputes for the purpose of invasion and dis- 
paragement. 

The Christians of the present day have not only 
a pressing interest in peace, but they can live in 
peace, for they possess liberty. In the sixteenth 
century, and as long as religious liberty was wanting, 
it was necessary to fight for the preservation and pro- 
fession of faith ; war was the consequence of tyranny 
and the necessity of religion. No one could be a Pro- 
testant in France, or a Catholic in England, unless 
he resisted by force Louis XIV. or the parliament 
of Charles II. In these times, wherever religious 
liberty is admitted, religious peace is possible. Free 
in their different creeds, Christians are able, and 
ought, while maintaining them, to watch also over the 
common interests of the Christian Church : in ceasing: 
to persecute and oppress each other, they can and 
ought to interchange mutual respect and support. 

I know, and I acknowledge the fact with regret, 
that religious liberty, the conquest and treasure of 



30 CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 

modern civilisation, was not introduced and esta- 
blished by believing Christians. Not that this liberty 
was opposed, I will not say to the principles, but to 
the traditions of Christianity; it has had, at all times, 
in the Christian Church, avowed partisans and de- 
fenders. In the fourth century, glorious Catholic 
Bishops, St. Hilary of Poitiers and St. Martin of 
Tours, raised their voices against religious perse- 
cution ; in the sixteenth century, William of Nassau, 
the Silent, the founder of Protestant Holland, main- 
tained, in opposition to a great majority of his 
friends, toleration for all Christian communions. In 
all epochs the history of Christianity presents to us 
instances of those rare and exalted souls who com- 
prehend and claim the rights of conscience and of 
human dignity. But it is true that the Christian 
Church has not achieved liberty by its innate virtue 
and exertions ; it is the human mind which, ele- 
vating and enfranchising itself, has also enfranchised 
man's conscience; it is laical society which, by 
seeking justice and freedom for itself, has bestowed, 
or I might say, imposed, the same privileges on 
religious society. I add that, in the existing state 
of minds and manners, laical society, and the powers 
which regulate it, are alone capable of protecting 



CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 31 

and maintaining religious liberty for the advantage 
of all. If, in presence of religious controversies and 
passions, that liberty, more holy than any other, 
should be placed under the control, and left to the 
discretion of the religious authorities themselves, it 
would be, I fear, in all quarters, seriously com- 
promised. It is owing to the maxims of civil 
society, and to the vigilant action of the civil 
powers, that this liberty is now, in the modern 
world, a fact accomplished, or on the point of accom- 
plishment, and the only fact which can assure, to 
religious society, peace in the bosom of division. 



32 



CHAP. VII. 

IN WHAT RELIGIOUS LIBERTY CONSISTS. 

Beligious liberty is the liberty of thought, of con- 
science, and of life, in matters of religion ; the liberty 
of believing or of not believing; the liberty of philoso- 
phers as of priests and of true Christians. The State 
owes to all the same security in the exercise of a 
common right. 

In what does the right itself consist ? Or, to speak 
more correctly, what are the different rights com- 
prised in and conferred by the principle of religious 
liberty ? 

The right, as regards individuals, of professing 
their faith and of exercising their worship, of con- 
necting themselves with any religious association they 
may prefer, of continuing with or of leaving it. 

The right, as regards different churches, of orga- 
nising and governing themselves internally according 
to the maxims of their faith and the traditions of their 
history. 



IN TTHAT RELIGIOUS LIBERTY CONSISTS. §3 

The right, both for the followers and the ministers 
of the different Churches, of teaching and propagating 
by moral and intellectual influence, their faith and 
worship. 

In common with all other rights, these are suscep- 
tible of abuse and encroachment ; they may, in the 
contact of opposite creeds within the bosom of the 
same society, mistake their limits, and reciprocate 
attacks. The State ought to watch over their exercise, 
and should the necessity arise, impose on them certain 
securities for the public peace. But judging things 
in themselves, and abstracting all local or casual cir- 
cumstances, it is indisputable that individual liberty 
of conscience and worship, the liberty of the internal 
organization and government of churches, the liberty 
of religious association, of religious teaching, and of 
the propagation of faith, are inherent in the prin- 
ciple of religious liberty; and that this principle 
becomes real or nominal, productive or barren, ac- 
cording as it bears or fails to bear these various 
consequences, as it receives or fails to receive these 
opposite applications. 



34 



CHAP, VIII. 

OF THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN THE STATE AND THE 
CHURCH. 

It is affirmed that complete religious liberty is only 
possible on the condition that the State and the 
Church should be completely separated and indepen- 
dent of each other. A wish has been expressed that 
no public tie should be established between thern, 
that the State should neither give to the Church, nor 
the Church receive from the State any special position 
or stipend ; that the members of the different churches, 
priests or followers, should merely be, in the eyes of 
the States simple citizens, who arrange their religious 
affairs in common, as other communities associate for 
their temporal concerns. 

If complete religious liberty could only exist at 
this cost, it would be a lamentable consequence of 
an excellent principle, for both religious and civil 
society would thus lose much moral authority, dignity 



THE STATE AXD THE CHURCH. 35 

and security. We can neither mistake nor offend 
with impunity the nature of things. Eeligious asso- 
ciations and creeds are, in general society, facts and 
influences of the first order. In acknowledging them 
officially and in securing to them means of dignity 
and stability, the State only renders homage to their 
natural importance, and assigns to them, in social 
order, the rank which is their due. 

When civil and religious society remain entirely 
disconnected, and mutually ignore each other, both 
become weakened and abased. Having no relations 
except with the temporal affairs and interests of men, 
the civil power loses the moral force naturally im- 
parted to it by the bond of religious principles and 
sentiments ; while, in their turn, the spiritual direc- 
tors of the different churches are reduced, even 
amongst communities of their own faith, to a sub- 
ordinate and precarious state ; they are exposed to 
all the instability of opinion, to the thoughtlessness 
and insolence of human inclinations. The contrast 
becomes painfully striking between the loftiness of 
their mission and the weakness of their actual situ- 
ation. In this mutual isolation, the State material- 
izes itself, and the Church, if we may so speak, be- 
comes more and more divided and unsettled. Civil 



36 OF THE ALLIANCE BETWEEX 

order loses sanction, and religious order declines in 
dignity and stability. 

Absolutely separated from the State, the Church 
incurs another danger : it falls readily into exagger- 
ation of doctrines and precepts. It loses a con- 
viction of the legitimate necessity of civil order ; it 
fails in experience and temperance; in the name 
of its divine origin and moral mission, it becomes 
hard and intractable towards human feelings, and the 
ordinary interests of life. We find sectarians and 
mystics, but not Christians. 

Society, moreover, does not entirely subsist on 
liberty. Neither religious nor civil order can dispense 
with every model of strong and permanent organiza- 
tion. Eeligious as well as civil associations aspire 
and ought to aspire to consistency and durability. It 
is not enough for them to offer to the passing genera- 
tions on the earth a momentary hospitality under 
shifting tents ; they must construct edifices in which 
succeeding races may dwell with confidence under a 
substantial shelter. 

I hasten to repeat, and no one is more convinced 
of the fact than I am — it is necessary that the tents 
should be freely erected around the buildings ; that 
the church or churches in alliance with the State, 
should not be permitted to oppose any obstacle to 



THE STATE AND THE CHURCH. 37 

the formation of other churches who prefer isolation 
to alliance. It is necessary that civil and religious 
society should remain professedly distinct, without 
the power of mutual invasion or oppression. But 
it is not necessary, to escape this peril, that they 
should become absolutely strangers to each other, 
and no longer be able, for the common honour and 
advantage of both, to contract public ties and inter- 
change reciprocal support. The merit of such an 
alliance depends on the terms under which it is con- 
tracted. These terms may possibly be contrary to 
the essential rights of both Church and State, and 
thus become a source of disorder and oppression. It 
has happened more than once, under the influence of 
human egotism, that the Church and State, by alli- 
ance, have mutually surrendered their rights and 
liberties. Some celebrated concordats have furnished 
examples of this. But it is not a necessary condition 
of the alliance ; it does not lead as an inevitable 
consequence to the establishment of a State religion 
fatal to liberty, or of a civil despotism in spiritual 
matters. These unjust results have taken then- 
source from the errors of the times and the evil 
passions of men, not from the nature of things and 
situations. The public tie between the State and 

D 8 



.38 THE STATE AXD THE CHUECH. 

the Churchy by no means requires that the individual 
liberty of minds should be shackled ; neither does 
the public character assigned by the State to the 
ministers of the Church, of necessity entail their 
dependence. The course of events and the progress 
of ideas have deeply impressed both on Church and 
State the fatal results of ill-conceived alliances, but 
they have not demonstrated the necessity of separa- 
tion. Taught by experience, and each more faithful 
to its true mission, the two communities can readily 
become reconciled to one another while remaining 
distinct, and render mutual support while preserving 
their. respective rights and liberties. It is thus alone 
that social and religious order can ascend and acquire 
strength together ; and thus only, in both, are ideas, 
institutions, and persons, raised to ' their natural ele- 
vation, and enabled to exercise their salutary influ- 
ence while preserving their lawful rank. Have we 
at present reached this point ? Is the alliance be- 
tween Church and State in the Christian world, and 
especially in France, all that it can and ought to be ? 
Does the Christian Church, and do all sects of Christians 
enjoy in principle, as in fact, in their relations with 
the State, all the liberties and guarantees to which 
they are entitled ? I am far from adopting this 
opinion. 



39 



CHAP. IX. 

THE PROTESTANT CHURCH OF FRANCE. 

The French Protestant Church suffers from the same 
evil which afflicts the whole Christian Church. The 
attacks directed against Christianity by the ma- 
terialists^ pantheists, sceptics, and scholastic critics, 
apply equally to Protestants and Catholics. The 
Protestant church is, moreover, agitated and divided 
within itself; it contains orthodox followers, latitu- 
dinarians, rationalists, deists, separatists, settled and 
wavering adherents. We encounter within its ranks 
animated faith and indifferent doubt, attachment to 
traditions, and an impulse towards novelties ; an 
intention to maintain and a desire to sever the 
alliance between Church and State. 

Some say that this state of Protestantism indicates 
a crisis which must either end in its ruin and in 
that of Christianity itself, or in some dissolving and 

D 4 



40 THE PKOTESTAUT CKUECH OF FEAXCE. 

enervating transformation, which, even in the esti- 
mate of those who urge it on, could scarcely retain 
the name of a religion. According to others, on the 
contrary, this latitude and variety in religious id ; 
and tendencies, this mixture of defined faith and 
vague belief, of persevering tradition and continued 
innovation, is the normal state, the true essence 
Protestantism ; it ought not only to accept, but cling 
to it as to its principle and right, admitting no 
general and permanent confession of faith, and con- 
sidering every attempt to settle a uniform doctrine, 
either for pastors or flock, as a blow struck again 
liberty. Others again energetically reject this lati- 
tude, this unlimited mobility, which, in their eyes, 
is nothing more than spiritual anarchy : they respect 
and receive in its full extent the. religious liberty 
secured by civil law. but they do not admit from 
thence that the Protestant Church should become 
an open arena for the most incoherent and even 
contradictory doctrines and discourses. According 
to them, it is a true church, which has : led 

faith written in the sacred books, and consecrated by 
tradition and history ; it has an indisputable right 
to maintain itself such as it has hitherto subsisted, 
and to support according to its rules, the men it 



THE PROTESTAXT CHURCH OF FRAXCE. 41 

calls from its own bosom to a ministry of Christian 
preaching and instruction. 

I recognise the crisis to which, in common with 
all Christianity, Protestantism is, in these days, ex- 
posed: it is painful and perilous, but neither for 
Protestantism nor for Christianity do I fear that it- 
will be definitive or fatal. As a religion, Protes- 
tantism is essentially Christian, and under this view 
it is not of human creation, and it belongs not more 
to man to destroy than it was given to him to create 
it. As an event, the Eeformation of the sixteenth 
century was determined by a multitude of causes 
and necessities moral and social, which endowed it 
with a force capable of surmounting the rudest trials 
of time and fortune ; and the attacks it has already 
survived, are at least equal to those it encounters at 
present. Protestantism has already experienced 
more than one crisis, sometimes from violent shocks, 
at others from languor and decay. It has been sub- 
jected to religious anarchy, philosophic doubt, erudite 
criticism, worldly indifference and fickleness. It has 
gone through these numerous vicissitudes without 
perishing in the midst of them ; its roots are too 
deeply planted to be torn up. We find amongst the 
fables of the Pagan mythology, that in his struggle 



42 THE PEOTESTAJST CHURCH OF FRANCE. 

with Hercules, the giant Antaeus, son of Terra (the 
Earth), had only to touch his mother with his foot 
to recover his strength. Christianity has received 
its powers, not from earth but from heaven, and 
when it is threatened with their extinction, it is by 
again uniting itself to heaven, to its supernatural 
source, that it regains them. In the dissensions 
which agitate the Protestant Church of France, the 
orthodox followers possess the merit of a firm belief 
in the supernatural, and of thus placing their faith 
in its true home, above the blows of its adversaries. 
And they are right in desiring that this faith should 
form the basis of the Church, for it is on this founda- 
tion alone that a Christian Church can establish itself, 
and legitimately assume that name. They are right 
also in thinking that to say " a Church," is to say a 
common religious creed in which souls unite, and 
that confessions of faith are only the expressions of 
that uniom There is nothing in this fact beyond 
what is perfectly natural and legitimate. It would 
be neither natural nor legitimate to persist in wish- 
ing to form part of a Church, without partaking its 
faith, and even by endeavouring to introduce into it 
a contradictory creed. If Luther and Calvin, when 
preaching the Eeformation, had pretended to remain 



THE PROTESTAXT CHURCH OF FRAXCE. 43 

always Catholics, the Church of Home would have 
had strong reason for astonishment ; and if she had 
then felt the justice of acknowledging religious 
liberty, she might have fairly said to them : " Call 
upon those who believe as you do, but do not remain 
personally in a Church which your souls refuse to 
acknowledge." 

Nevertheless, I do not think that in the actual 
state of Protestantism, orthodox Protestants are 
called upon to apply with vigour a principle legiti- 
mate in itself, and, in these days, to make a precise 
and formal confession of faith the absolute rule of 
their Church. Two motives, one of equity and 
prudence, the other of strict public right, equally 
interdict this course. 

Dogmatic Protestantism has been reproached, not 
without reason, with a want of consideration and 
gentleness, with pushing all things to extremes, and 
with forgetting the spirit of Christianity to fall into 
that of sectarianism. The error, in our age, would 
be more serious and inopportune than ever. In the 
religious movement which at present agitates French 
Protestantism, the combat is still extremely confused, 
and many persons, otherwise serious and sincere, do 
not entertain, on their own individual faith, firmly 



44 THE PEOTESTAXT CHURCH OF FKAXCE. 

established ideas and resolutions. Some, recently 
escaped from indifference, express astonishment at 
certain specific creeds, presented to them as essential 
to Christianity ; others, infected by orthodox zeal 
with impatient ardour, entertain anxious alarms for 
religious liberty ; a great number who are honestly 
uncertain and uneasy, and with a sincere desire to 
be Christians, hesitate to enter into, or pause in the 
paths of orthodoxy, doubting whether they are really 
Christian ways. In expelling from its bosom all 
those Protestants, whether pastors or disciples, who 
are prepossessed with these anxieties or doubts, the 
Protestant Church would show itself wanting in 
equity, and would incur the risk of seeing its ranks 
too much thinned. It becomes it to show itself 
moderate and patient, to admit all shades to their 
due portion, to labour without premature urgency to 
convince those who doubt, to re-assure those who 
fear, and to depend, for the progress of faith, on the 
empire of truth and time, while paying due respect 
to freedom of action. 

Law commands, moreover, what equity and prudence 
recommend. The Protestant Church of France is too 
incompletely organized and too imperfectly free for 
authority to exercise itself in its interior government 



THE PKOTESTAXT CHUECH OF FKAXCE. 45 

with an indisputable character and without fear of 
compromising liberty. 

The interior organization of the Protestant Church 
of France, like its faith, does not date from yesterday. 
It has enjoyed, ever since its foundation, an appro- 
priate and regular government, consistories and 
synods, composed of laymen and ecclesiastics, of 
pastors and disciples debating and deciding together 
on the local and general affairs of the establishment. 
This religious constitution of French Protestantism 
has been in vigour throughout the whole course 
of its history, even at the time when it saw its 
liberty contested, attacked, and progressively de- 
stroyed. It was formerly recognized by the organic 
articles which in 1802 reconstructed the Christian 
Churches in France and regulated their relations with 
the State. The provincial consistories and the local 
synods are equally protected by this law. It makes 
no mention of a general synod, but it does not ex- 
clude it. Its silence on this point is easily explained : 
while restoring Christianity to its position in the 
State, the consular government and the public of 
that period, in common with the legislative power, 
dreaded its full and active liberty ; above all, its as- 
semblies* The old internal constitution of the Pro- 



46 THE PKOTESTAOT CHURCH OF FRANCE. 

testant Church was acknowledged in principle, but 
incompletely admitted in practice; the local consis- 
tories alone received actual existence : on certain 
special and rare occasions, some principal synods 
were authorised to re-assemble: the general convo- 
cation never appeared. We are at the same point 
to-day. The personal organization of the Protestant 
Church continues imperfect and mutilated : that 
Church does not yet possess the religious government 
bequeathed to it by its history and pi mrised : : it by 
the new laws. 

Neither does French Protestantism enjoy the full 
liberty to which it is entitled. This right is not 
entirely confined to the Protestant Church as ac- 
knowledged and supported by the State. The 
formation of dissenting churches which, from motives 
of creed or worship, separate from the Church 
officially constituted, and live by themselves, with rat 
demanding any privilege beyond this freedom, be- 
longs equally to the nature of Protestantism and t ] 
the rights of civil order. But according to the laws 
now in vigour, these churches although called / .. 
cannot constitute themselves or assemble without the 
formal authority of the government, which can al- 
ways withhold its sanction. When these laws were 



THE PKOTESTAXT CHURCH OF FRAXCE. 47 

enacted, their real object was to destroy secret 
meetings and political associations ; and it was then 
frequently asserted that religious liberty would in no 
manner be affected by them. But to prevent this 
consequence, and to enable religious liberty to pre- 
serve^ at least, under the general restriction imposed 
on societies, effectual guarantees, it became essential 
that, when dissenting churches were formed, the 
question of ascertaining whether they were really 
and purely religious assemblies, divested of all poli- 
tical intrigue, should be submitted' to an independent 
power; that is to say, to the ordinary tribunals. 
Now this question is, at present, entirely in the 
hands of the administration, which deciding solely 
on the fact thus disposes of the right ; a proceeding 
which substitutes, as well for religious communities 
as for political associations, prejudice for restraint, 
and arbitrary interference for liberty. 

Hence it arises, that, as regards French Protes- 
tantism, neither the internal nor external organization 
of the Church is yet complete or secure. The 
Protestant Church of France does not possess within 
itself the essential and independent authority which 
can alone establish general rules for its government ; 
neither can it feel certain that if these rules were 



48 THE PROTESTANT CHURCH OF FRANCE. 

instituted, those amongst the Protestants who might 
object to submit to them would be free to practice 
amongst themselves their own creed and form 
of worship. To enable spiritual authority to exer- 
cise itself firmly and without hesitation in the 
established Church, the full liberty of the dissenting 
churches requires to be assured; while the free 
existence of the dissenting churches is indispensable 
to secure an equitable and circumspect exercise of 
authority in the established Church. If dissent were 
not perfectly free, orthodoxy would readily become 
oppressive. In spiritual, as in temporal order, in 
the Church as in the State, power, to continue 
rational and legitimate, requires to be controlled and 
held in check by liberty. 



49 



CHAP. X. 

THE CATHOLIC CHUKCH AND LIBERTY. 

Great examples and lessons have never been want- 
ing to the world, and no age has presented or re- 
ceived more than ours. But too often, now as well as 
formerly, they have offered themselves in vain; a 
deep cause for regret with thinking minds and honest 
dispositions. Nevertheless there are examples and 
lessons so great in themselves and so often repeated, 
that in the end they triumph over human thought- 
lessness, and exercise a salutary influence upon the 
reflections and conduct of men. 

I am inclined to hope that the events with which 
we are associated in our own days will possess this 
virtue. Never perhaps has experience spoken more 
loudly and intelligibly. 

It is a commonplace and well-founded historical 
assertion that, since the sixteenth century, Catholicism 
has been, in general, hostile to freedom. Holding 



50 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND LIBERTY. 

authority as its fundamental principle, and seeing 
that principle violently attacked, it has too much 
forgotten and denied the rights of the corresponding 
principle in human nature and destiny, — liberty. 
During several centuries, Catholic spiritual power 
had often and effectively protected social privileges 
against temporal despotism ; but when placed in 
question itself, and not trusting to its own inherent 
strength, this power has almost everywhere allied 
itself with absolute political power, and has supported 
it for its own defence. 

Wherever this alliance has been carried out, 
religious and political liberty have equally suffered ; 
conscience and society have lived under the yoke. 

Men endure much and for a long time; but not 
everything and for ever. Against this double bond- 
age, the spirit of resistance and of liberty finally 
broke out. According as the alliance of the two 
powers was more or less complete and determined, 
the struggle between them, amongst different Chris- 
tian peoples, in Germany, in England, in Spain, in 
France, and in Italy, assumed very different aspects 
and vicissitudes, but everywhere ended in the same 
result ; a little sooner or a little later, with more or 
less tumult and destruction, it has happened in all 



THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND LIBERTY. 51 

countries, that the union contracted between absolute 
temporal and absolute spiritual catholic power to 
impose a common yoke, has been fatal to both. If, 
at the outset, they have derived some strength from 
it, they have soon found themselves thereby deterio- 
rated and awakened. In all countries this union 
and its object have been condemned by experience; 
everywhere it has been made evident that if not a 
rupture of all ties between the State and the Church, 
at least a separation of their domains and of their 
mutual liberty, is indispensably necessary for their 
security as well as for their dignity and repose* 

Christian Europe is now in this position. 

This is a great step towards a better future, for 
Church as well as State, for religion and liberty. 
But we still waver in this path ; to reassure us and 
to advance towards the end, we must watch zealously 
lest we should fall again into the old beaten track ; 
the evil alliance between the two powers ought not to 
be suffered to recommence; civil liberty should be 
strenuously defended against the encroachments of 
religious influence, and religious freedom against 
those of civil authority; the Church and State must 
remain free and intact, each in its respective domain. 

I sometimes picture to myself what might happen 
E 2 



52 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND LIBERTY. 

if one day the supreme power of the Catholic Church, 
the Papacy, should accept, fully and openly, the 
principle of religious liberty. Not that of mental 
indifference, but of the incompatibility and absolute 
illegality of force in matters of faith. This principle 
does not touch any of the important bases of 
Catholicism, neither the unity nor spiritual infalli- 
bility of the Church and its head, nor any dogma 
essentially religious. It consists solely in recognizing 
the separation of civil and religious life, the authority 
of mind alone over mind, and the right of human con- 
science not to be governed, in its relations with God, 
by human decrees and punishments. We cannot 
estimate by anticipation the effect which the frank 
and firm introduction of this principle into the 
Catholic Church might produce in the civilized world. 
By its strong organization, by the splendour of its 
worship, by many of its institutions and maxims, 
that Church responds to powerful instincts of 
human nature. If it would seriously renounce, 
without reserve or theological subtilty, all alliance 
with absolute temporal power, all hostility against 
civil liberty, all appeal to physical constraint in 
spiritual order, it would receive much strength ; 
for, without ceasing to be religiously itself, it would 



THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND LIBEETY. 53 

return to social harmony with the present and the 
future. 

Will this political reform of Catholicism take 
place ? will there ever be at the head of the Catholic 
Church a powerful and commanding genius to pro- 
claim its legitimacy and necessity ? JSTo one can tell. 
In that Church > amongst its followers and priests, 
favourable symptoms manifest themselves, and efforts 
are made to introduce and establish in the relations 
of civil and religious society a real and reciprocal 
liberty. But other symptoms and acts reveal, at the 
same time, in the bosom of Catholicism, a senseless 
obstinacy for the pernicious routines of ideas and 
language, which leads the ill-disposed and indifferent 
to exclaim, " You see plainly the case is beyond cure." 
Thus a dread of the absolute pretensions and traditions 
of Catholicism perpetuates itself; far from subsiding, 
the struggle between the State and the Church re- 
commences ; we are nearer to retrogression than to 
advance in the paths of justice and liberty. 

During this unsettled crisis, while laical society 
and the Catholic Church, mutually suspicious, watch 
and sound each other, doubtful whether they can 
live in concord, what ought every rational govern- 
ment, every sincere and honest liberal to do ? One 

E 3 



54 THE CATHOLIC CHUECH AXD LIBERTY. 

course alone remains to them as regards both interest 
and imperious duty. They are called upon to pro- 
fess and practise, towards the various forms of liberty 
opposed to each other, a respect equally profound 
and resolute ; to maintain all in common, and to 
endeavour by the authority of facts to dispel the 
mutual doubts and inquietudes which retard their 
peaceful co-existence. 

Unfortunately, the facts in which we participate 
to-day, operate in precisely an opposite sense. Ap- 
pearances and realities contradict each other ; we 
hear songs of triumph re-echo in praise of religious 
freedom ; it seems as if its hour had come, as if it 
were ready to pass into the universal fact as well 
as the admitted right of society ; and this ebullition 
of liberality displays itself at the very moment when 
a serious blow is aimed against the religious liberty 
of a considerable portion of Europe ! 

I have said, and facts declare more loudly than 
my words, that religious liberty does not solely con- 
sist in the personal and isolated right of every man 
to profess his own faith. The internal constitution of 
the society in which men unite religiously, that is to 
say the Church, its mode of government, its relations 
with its ministers and followers, the rules and tradi- 



THE CATHOLIC CHUKCH AND LIBERTY. 55 

tions which preside over it, form an integral portion 
of religious liberty ; and wherever this liberty is pro- 
claimed, it can only be real and complete when the 
Established Church and the different Churches enjoy 
it equally with individuals. 

What would the Protestant Church of France say, 
if, in spite of its primitive institutions and history, 
in defiance of the law which recognises its synods, 
it should be told, " You shall have no synods, no 
superior and independent authority to regulate your 
internal and general affairs ; each of your local 
churches shall remain isolated, and shall decide, 
according to its own pleasure, on questions which 
interest Protestantism at large ? " If such language 
were held to the French Protestants, if their peculiar 
and traditional institutions were abolished, would 
they find their religious liberty complete? Would 
they consider their religious rights as sufficiently 
exercised and secured ? 

If the British Parliament, while leaving the 
Catholics perfectly free to profess their faith and 
practise their worship within the three kingdoms, 
were absolutely to interdict to the whole body, priests 
and laymen, all connection with the Papacy, and 
thus to destroy, as far as they are concerned, the 

E 4 



56 THE CATHOLIC CHUECH A^D LIBEKTY. 

government of the Catholic Church by severing the 
ties which everywhere unite the head and the mem- 
bers, would religious liberty exist in England ? 
Would the English Catholics hold themselves satis- 
fied with the enjoyment of their individual religious 
liberty, when the general liberty of their Church was 
abolished ? 

Every one is aware that, independently of religious 
dogmas, two essential facts characterise the organiza- 
tion and position of the Catholic Church ; it has a 
general and single head acknowledged by all Catholics 
whether assembled or dispersed amongst all the 
nations of the world ; this head is at the same time 
the spiritual prince of all Catholicism, and the tem- 
poral sovereign of a small European state. A vehe- 
ment debate is at present excited .on this subject. 
Some assume that the union of these two characters 
is not necessary to the papacy, and that it may 
preserve its spiritual power without possessing any 
temporal sovereignty. Others maintain the necessity 
of the temporal power for the free and certain exer- 
cise of the spiritual supremacy. 

I do not propose at present to enter into this de- 
bate, or to examine the system of government of the 
Catholic Church ; I merely defend its liberty and its 



THE CATHOLIC CHUKGH AND LIBEETY. 57 

right to that liberty. The double character of the 
Papacy is a fact consecrated by ages. This fact has 
deyeloped and maintained itself through all the 
vicissitudes, struggles, and quarrels of Christianity. 
It is not alone the Catholic faith, but the Catholic 
Church itself. And upon this fact it is supposed that 
a violent hand may be laid, to alter and even to 
destroy it at pleasure, without striking a blow against 
the religious liberty of the Catholics ! The spiritual 
head of the Catholic Church is to be despoiled of a 
character and position which that Church has looked 
upon for ages as the guarantee of its independence ; 
and at the same time it is pretended that this ex- 
treme measure neither fetters nor mutilates Catho- 
licism ! And even more, it is asserted that the 
Catholic Church has never been free, and is now 
going to become so. A free Church is the principle 
proclaimed in the name of the State, at the moment 
when the State strips from the Church its constitu- 
tion and its home. 

I do not believe, on the part of a man of superior 
talent and character, in a cynical and derisive hypo- 
crisy. I admit, as M. de Cavour has said and his 
friends have attested, that he really intended a 
serious and practical truth when he adopted the 



58 THE CATHOLIC CHUKCH AND LIBERTY. 

maxim, " The Church free in a free country/' for the 
programme of his policy. If, in labouring to conquer 
and establish the kingdom of Italy, he had merely 
declared, as did successively the various United 
States of the American republic, the absolute separa- 
tion of the State and the Church, leaving the Catholic 
Church as he found it established, and in possession 
of its ancient institutions, he might have had some 
right to use this language: but to proclaim the Catholic 
Church free, when, in spite of itself, its possessions 
are invaded and wrested from it by force, to sport 
with its traditions and overthrow its foundations, 
supplies an example uu paralleled in history of the 
presumptuous and tyrannical levity into which the 
most exalted intellects may fall when they abandon 
themselves to the intoxication of ambition and 
success. 



59 



CHAP. XL 

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN ITALY. 

If the Catholic Church had been only an Italian 
Church ; if Catholicism had been confined within the 
limits of that beautiful country 

"Ch.' Apemiin parte, e '1 mar circoncla. e l'Alpe," 

of that land which M. de Cavour undertook to con- 
quer entirely for Piedmont, there would have been 
some plausible motive, some specious appearance in 
his language ; he would only have touched spiritual 
order where he changed temporal order ; he would 
only have attacked religious liberty where he estab- 
lished political unity, and the local Church, placed 
under the law of a new State, would have been the 
only sufferer by the change. But the Catholic Church 
is everywhere, without as within Italy, in the Old and 
in the New World ; and in every quarter would the 
abolition of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope 



60 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH I1ST ITALY. 

change its condition and assail its liberties. If M. 
de Cavour, in the new Italian kingdom, had desired 
the absolute separation of Church and State, and the 
entire religious freedom of Catholicism in place of its 
alliance with the civil power, — it might have been 
admitted. I do not ask whether he would have been 
right or wrong ; he would at least have acted within 
the limits of his political rights and of Italian sove- 
reignty. But to adopt, as regards the Catholic 
Church, measures which everywhere change its con- 
stitution and position, which affect the Catholics of 
France, Germany, Spain, England, America, and the 
whole world, together with those of Italy; which 
prepossess and disturb the Catholic missionaries in 
the cities of China and in the islands of Oceania, as 
well as the ministers and believers in Paris and 
Madrid; to take from all these Churches, nations, 
and consciences, utterly strangers to the Italian 
kingdom, the ancient sovereignty, the old securities 
for the independence of the spiritual head of their 
religion, is, undoubtedly, one of the strangest acts of 
usurpation which history acknowledges or the mind 
can conceive. 

Has the Catholic Church of Italy itself taken any 
part in this act ? Has general Catholicism, beyond 



THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN ITALY. 61 

the Alps, had its representatives, who have given to 
the policy of M. de Cavour, I do not say a formal 
consent, but even any colour, any appearance of 
religious adhesion? It is affirmed, and I am not 
astonished at it, that the Italian clergy have not, in 
a mass, exhibited the same repugnance, the same 
ardour of opposition to this policy, which have dis- 
played themselves in other portions of the Catholic 
Church. The Papacy, it is said, is unpopular in 
Italy, and even amongst its natural defenders, many 
resign themselves coldly to its reverses. The national 
sentiment, the hope of seeing Italy at last delivered 
from the rule of the stranger, a newly-born impulse 
towards the old idea of Italian unity, and perhaps 
the general spirit of the age, either sincerely liberal 
or blindly revolutionary, have penetrated, it is said, 
the ranks of the Italian priesthood, and counter- 
balance the alarms inspired by the attacks directed 
against the Church. I do not dispute, for I well 
know the part that was taken by illustrious Italian 
Catholics, ecclesiastics and laymen, during the first 
inspiration and opening scenes of the great movement 
by which Italy is agitated ; but, as ever happens in 
similar cases, they were far from foreseeing with 
what rapidity this movement would exceed their 



62 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN ITALY. 

views, and precipitate itself towards a revolution 
against the Church, followed up by passions and 
ambitions exclusively temporal. Despite the names 
and writings of the Abbes Grioberti and Kosmini, 
of Silvio Pellico and Manzoni, there is absolutely 
no religious element in what has passed and is 
now passing in Italy; it is not within the bosom 
of the Church, nor upon questions or dissensions of 
spiritual order, that the Italian ferment took rise and 
developed itself; whether good or evil, its tendencies 
are exclusively political ; political powers have ex- 
cited and continue to work it for their special advan- 
tage ; the Catholic Church reckons for nothing in 
itself, with the acts and ideas which overthrew its 
organization and position ; it has neither been con- 
sulted nor listened to ; it bows under the wishes and 
blows of conquering foreigners who lay their hands 
upon and strike it even in countries remote from 
their conquests. 

When light expanded upon these events, when they 
assumed their true character and direction, resistance 
was not wanting in the Catholic Church of Italy: 
resistance sometimes irrational and too indistinctly 
opposed to all reform, but sincere, courageous, and 
justly brought on by the violences and perils to which 



THE CATHOLIC CHURCH EST ITALY, 63 

the Church was exposed. The greater part of the 
Italian bishops and many priests loudly protested 
against or held themselves aloof from the movement ; 
several resisted actively, and are still enduring, in 
exile, or under the weight of various penalties, the 
consequences of the struggle. Sentiments of an 
extremely mingled nature undoubtedly agitate the 
Catholic Church of Italy; its personal alarms have 
not extinguished its sympathetic instincts for national 
independence ; but, in the midst of its perplexities, 
it is far from lending or even from resigning itself 
to a revolution which powers utterly foreign to 
spiritual order pretend to accomplish in its internal 
constitution and against its liberty. 



64 



CHAP. XII. 

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN FRANCE. 

In this great trial to which Catholicism is exposed, 
the Catholic Church of France has protested and re- 
sisted with superior energy and celebrity. 

This was in due course; for three quarters of a 
century the French Catholic Church has been most 
frequently in action and under endurance. It has 
learned more than any other, because it has suffered 
more. 

It has learned to measure the extent and to foresee 
the consequences of ideas and events. It has been 
taught to recognize from a distance the revolutionary 
and the anti-Christian spirit. Its own experience 
has taught it prudence, and fitted it for the struggle. 

A mixture, a confusion, I might even say, a 
chaos of the most incoherent and contrary ideas, 
formed in 1789 the predominating danger of our 
fathers, as it still constitutes our own existing peril. 



THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN FRANCE. 65 

Nothing can be more incoherent than the spirit of 
liberty and the spirit of revolution, than respect for 
human dignity and aversion to authority. These are, 
notwithstanding, the dispositions we have often seen, 
and still often see confounded and mistaken for each 
other: a fatal mistake, which at first compromises 
and speedily tarnishes the good cause, and carries us 
far from the object towards which we believe we are 
advancing, and wish to advance. 

What is true in political order applies equally to 
spiritual order ; nothing assimilates less than respect 
for conscience and contempt for faith, religious liberty 
and irreligion. How many people hold these senti- 
ments so totally incompatible, as naturally united 
and almost inseparable ! Here, again, the confusion 
is equally frequent and fatal. 

Under the influence of this chaos, of the events it 
has produced, and the instruction it has received 
from them, the Catholic Church of France has seen 
spring up and expand within its bosom very opposite 
dispositions, which manifest themselves whenever im- 
portant circumstances call them into action. 

The first and most universal of these dispositions 
is submission to political vicissitudes, and what is 
designated the force of events. The idea that religion 



66 THE CATHOLIC CHUKCH IN FKANCE. 

ought to hold itself apart from politics, and pursue 
its mission of morality and for the salvation of souls, 
whatever may be existing systems and dynasties, pre- 
vails more and more with the French clergy. They 
have practised it for sixty years, sometimes reluc- 
tantly, but at the same time under a conviction that 
they thus discharge their religious obligations, while 
they secure their social existence from the blows of 
fortune. By a very natural movement, generous 
minds have exclaimed against this imperturbable 
adhesion of the clergy to the most contradictory 
systems, and have charged them with egotistical 
weakness. "Weakness and egotism have often their 
share in rational conduct, and the dignity of the 
clergy has suffered from their undefined political com- 
plaisance. On the whole, nevertheless, the attitude 
of the greater portion of the ecclesiastics under these 
circumstances has been regulated by a just sentiment 
of their situation and mission. The care of souls is, 
in fact, the true and important avocation of the 
Church, a paramount and permanent duty, through 
all the vicissitudes of the State. Men actively en- 
gaged in politics are inclined, moreover, to forget too 
readily revolutionary shocks, the dangers they have 
imparted to society, and the alarms they have in- 



THE CATHOLIC CHUECH IX FRANCE. G7 

spired. Honest citizens unconnected with public life, 
societies charged with superintending the moral and 
civil interests of nations, retain a more lasting recol- 
lection of them, and look upon themselves as specially 
called upon to prevent their return. Hence arises 
their inclination to support power, whatever may be 
its name or form, as soon as it presents itself as the 
guardian of order and acquires some degree of regu- 
larity and permanence. This is the prevailing dis- 
position of the clergy and magistracy in France ; a 
disposition sincere and salutary in itself, but which 
frequently reduces these two great bodies to a subor- 
dinate attitude, and compromises their moral in- 
fluence while raising doubts of their independence. 

In conjunction with this modest prudence, our 
revolutions have provoked, in the Catholic clergy, a 
very different spirit: the spirit of reaction towards 
the old system both in Church and State. This spirit 
manifested itself under the Eestoration, by rash efforts 
to force the government into retrograding paths ; under 
the monarchy of 1830, by an ill feeling more obsti- 
nate than bold, and always by a systematic adhesion 
to the principles of absolute power and a declared 
hostility against the ideas and acts of 1789. A blind 
spirit which not only produced the effect of estranging 



68 THE CATHOLIC CHUECH IN FRANCE. 

the Catholic clergy of France from the new French 
society, and of rendering them suspected, but which 
often placed them in a radically false position, for it 
led them by natural and pressing interests to de- 
mand on their own account the very liberties, which, 
in general hypothesis, they condemned as -unlawful 
and pernicious. They thus laid themselves open to 
the charge of inconsistency or hypocrisy. It was a 
strange sight to behold liberty of association, liberty 
of instruction, and even the liberty of the press, 
ardently called for by the very men who made politi- 
cal absolutism their fundamental doctrine. Neither 
in Church nor State can power prove false to itself 
without depreciation. 

Happily for the Catholic Church of France, the 
events in which it has participated,, and the trials it 
has undergone have instilled into its ranks other 
dispositions than those of submission and the spirit 
of reaction. "While amongst its millions, some rather 
blindly rallied round power, and others angrily joined 
the advocates for the past, independent and cou- 
rageous thinkers appeared here and there, zealous 
believers, although strongly prepossessed in favour of 
the rights appertaining to the dignity and future 
welfare of the Church, and serving it, each in his own 



THE CATHOLIC CHUECH IN FKAXCE. 69 

way, according to his personal passion and bias. The 
journals, the periodical miscellanies, philosophic con- 
troversies, political debates, questions in the order of 
the day, liberty of association, and freedom of in- 
struction, have supplied those volunteers of the 
Church with opportunities and fields of battle. They 
have conducted themselves there valiantly, and often 
with reputation. Many amongst them mixed with 
the world, and thence imported valuable allies to the 
church. Amongst the episcopacy they found gener- 
ous and eloquent patrons. And thus has been formed 
in France, in the Catholic Church, and for its service, 
I will not say a party or coterie, but a group of ele- 
vated spirits, at once faithful and free, moderate and 
determined, rational and estimable, capable of sym- 
pathy with the sentiments of the country, as of de- 
votion for their acknowledged faith, and determined 
to accept and to assume religious liberty as the basis 
of all relations between the Church and the State, 

The fact has been tested by experience. Amongst 
this group, the Catholic Church, attacked in its general 
constitution and liberties by the events of Italy, has 
recently found, and will always find, its most useful 
as well as its steadiest defenders. These alone are in 
a condition to defend it effectually, and to obtain 

F 3 



70 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IX FRAXCE. 

credit with the country for their defence. Let not the 
Catholics deceive themselves on this point. The 
court of Eome has been too often and too long the 
ally of absolute power, for its cause not to excite 
suspicion amongst the friends of political and re- 
ligious liberty. Thus, when itself in danger, how many 
hesitate to fly to its aid! — some from reminiscences 
and mistrust, some from respect for the civil power, 
and others through fear of unpopularity. And when 
the partisans, avowed or presumed, of the reaction 
in favour of absolutism are the first to take in 
hand the defence of the Church, they compromise 
much more than they serve it. In these days, the 
Catholic Church can only have for profitable cham- 
pions, either at home or abroad, men who are sincere 
advocates for liberty, and equally determined to 
maintain that liberty for the general benefit, towards 
all and against all. 



71 



CHAP. XIII. 

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. 

There are decisive moments in the lives of religious 
or civil associations; there are trials which, ill or 
well endured, determine for a long time their cha- 
racter and destiny. 

I do not apply this to Christianity considered in 
its essence and as a religion ; it soars above such 
alarms. Undoubtedly it is at present passing through 
a crisis ; philosophic, scientific, and historical denial 
and doubt, assail it from all quarters, and in a 
multitude of minds faith falls or totters. As long as 
this crisis continues, Christianity will defend itself 
pre-eminently by its moral beauty and social utility. 
These qualities form a rampart it is already ac- 
quainted with, and under the shelter of which it has 
more than once retired in days of intellectual tempest. 
But the storm will subside, as has already happened 
more than once, and Christian light will resume, 

F 4 



72 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. 

above the clouds gathered round it by the hand of 
man, its reputation and empire. This future is 
written in the history of the past. 

It is not for Christianity itself, but for the Chris- 
tian Churches as they at present exist, that I feel 
uneasiness. Amongst the Christian communities 
for which I am anxious, I do not include the Greek 
Church, of which I have not sufficient knowledge to 
judge of its present state or future prospects. I 
speak only of the Catholic Church and the Pro- 
testant Churches. These are at the present moment 
exposed to trials which, according as they are well 
or ill endured, will exercise upon their own destiny, 
and the destiny of all Christian society, an influence 
the bearing of which exceeds calculation. 

As regards the Catholic Church, the question is 
whether it will learn, without perverting itself re- 
ligiously, to harmonize with the ideas, sentiments, 
and institutions which evidently prevail, and will 
continue to prevail, more and more in the civilized 
world. While continuing guardian of the principle 
of authority, will it acknowledge liberty as a right, 
and will it cease to consider itself as engaged in the 
cause of absolute power ? While defending and 
maintaining its faith, will it admit the general ac- 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. 73 

tivity of minds, respect for science, and the pro- 
pensity for social progress? Where it remains in 
alliance with the civil power, will it preserve the 
spirit and the pledges of independence which have so 
powerfully contributed to its moral strength ? If 
it were to lose that strength, the Catholic clergy 
would incur the risk of falling into the condition of 
a body of functionaries charged with the administra- 
tion of souls. There is, in these days, too much of a 
general tendency to reduce them to this false and 
subordinate position. Their mission is more exalted. 
To fulfil it effectually, they require a basis placed 
above and beyond the attacks of the temporal 
masters of the State. It has long found this rest- 
ing-point in the Papacy. When the theocratic pre- 
tensions of the Papacy in France menaced the 
independence of the State and its government, the 
French clergy, faithful to their national society, ex- 
hibited an act of independence towards Eome ; the 
G-allican Church appeared. The clergy are now 
reproached with having become altramontanists. 
They have been driven to this extreme in defence 
of Christianity and of themselves. Attacked in 
their essential privileges, in their independence, in 
their faith, in their existence, the French Church 



74 THE CHEISTIAN CHUKCHES. 

fell back on the centre of the general Catholic 
Church ; it sought and found a refuge in Kome, and 
from thence raised itself up again. The scene has 
changed ; Eome is now in urgent danger ; what can 
be more natural than the eager zeal of the French 
clergy in her defence ? In this most solemn moment 
for them, they are called on to perform in France an 
act at once of Christian wisdom and of national 
spirit by harmonizing with the new state of society ; 
and, beyond France, an act of fidelity to the general 
Church and to its head by maintaining their inde- 
pendence and dignity. Will they emerge pros- 
perously from this double trial? Will they be 
found equal to this double mission ? 

The difficulties and perils of the French Protestant 
Church, the only one I propose to speak of here, 
are of a distinct nature. It is not engaged or com- 
promised in the political contests of the day ; it is 
not the object of any attack on the part of temporal 
power; and it inspires no mistrust amongst the 
friends of liberty. But its organization is incom- 
plete ; its personal and traditional government fail. 
Securities also are wanting to it for the free develop- 
ment of the dissenting churches, which free inquiry 
incessantly engenders in its bosom, and which it 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. 75 

considers, and ought always to consider, as swarms 
detached from the maternal hive, but not entirely 
lost to it. And it is in the midst of an active religious 
movement that French Protestantism finds itself 
thus deprived of the internal authority and liberty 
of which it stands so much in need. Orthodox 
Christian faith reanimates itself amongst Protestants, 
and at the same time reanimates the controversy 
which provokes dissent. This simultaneous revival 
of Protestant faith and criticism coincides with the 
attacks of which Christianity itself is the object. 
And in this confused scuffle Protestantism is in 
danger of seeing its cause perverted, and of passing 
from the banner of Christian liberty under that of 
scepticism and indifference in the leading article 
of faith. 

I return to the point from whence I started. 
Whether Catholic or Protestant, a common danger 
at present threatens the Christian Churches ; the 
common foundations of their faith are attacked ; 
the} 7 " have all to defend the same interest and the 
same duty, for they would equally perish in the ruin 
of the edifice under which they all live. It is, more- 
over, the present condition of all, that to defend 
themselves and to defend Christianity they equally 



76 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. 

require liberty. It is in the name of its general 
constitution and of the traditional guarantees for its 
independence that the Catholic Church can rise 
above the blows that strike it 3 and it can only de- 
mand its own liberties by admitting those of the 
other Christian Churches. Protestantism, in its 
turn, to preserve itself from anarchy while remain- 
ing faithful to its principle of free inquiry, is called 
upon to claim the complete organization of its in- 
terior government, and the unrestricted liberty of 
the dissenters who may secede from the Established 
Church. It is, moreover, required, in the present 
day, to defend the liberties of Catholicism at the 
same time with its own ; it has an admirable oppor- 
tunity of declaring an act of liberal fidelity as of 
Christian charity, and of thus giving to the Catholic 
Church one of those examples which confer on the 
givers the right of demanding a just return. Ca- 
tholics and Protestants, who may ignore this position, 
and reject the line of conduct which it prescribes, 
will fail in their religious duty and permanent in- 
terest, for the blind and momentary indulgence of 
personal passion. 



77 



CHAP. XIV. 

CHRISTIAN SOCIETIES. 

I leave the Church, and enter upon laical and 
political society. I have just said what I think of 
the actual position and relations of the Christian 
Churches. I wish to add also rny opinion on the 
events, either accomplished or attempted under our 
own eyes in Italy, between civilized and Christian 
States. 

It is above all in what concerns the mutual ties of 
different peoples, and the external relations of states, 
that modern civilization is especially Christian in its 
origin. With pagan antiquity, even in its most 
enlightened scenes of action and brightest days, 
foreigners were looked upon as enemies. Unless 
when particular and defined conventions were con- 
cluded between two nations, they considered them- 
selves absolutely strangers to each other, and naturally 



78 CHRISTIAN SOCIETIES. 

hostile. Force regulated their intercourse; the 
rights of nations had no existence. Scarcely did 
the most enlightened minds of ancient days, Aris- 
totle and Cicero, conceive an indistinct idea on 
this point; we rarely meet in history with even 
vague and transient instincts of mutual privileges 
and duties. 

Christianity has established two points equally new 
and important. It has placed the simple quality of 
man above and beyond all accidental and local cir- 
cumstances, above and beyond nationality and social 
position. According to Christian faith, the stranger 
is a man, and possesses the rights, inherent to his 
human quality, in common with the fellow-country- 
man. At the same time that its origin is divine, the 
fundamental idea of Christianity is essentially and 
supremely human. Under the empire of this idea, 
Christianity looks upon all men, and all nations, as 
bound together by other ties than those of force ; 
by bonds independent of the diversity of territories 
and governments. All men and all peoples were 
included in its mission : ffC Gro ye and teach all 
nations." While labouring to convert all nations, 
Christianity also intended to unite them, and to 
instil into their reciprocal dealings the principles 



CHRISTIAN SOCIETIES. 79 

of justice and peace, of mutual rights and duties. 
It is in the name of the christian faith and 
law that in Christendom the rights of nations 
originated. 

After the fall of the Eoman Empire, and during 
the middle ages, the Papacy, in the midst of the 
violent disorders of the times, and of its own diffi- 
culties, has ever been the interpreter, defender, and 
patron of the rights of nations. It has often to- 
lerated, and even sanctioned, their violation ; it has 
often subordinated them to its own ambition and 
interest ; but, on the whole, it is the Papacy alone, 
at that epoch, which in the name of religion, mo- 
rality, the natural privileges of the human race, and 
the general interests of Christianity, interfered be- 
tween different states, between princes and people, 
the strong and the weak, to restore and support 
justice, respect for engagements, mutual duties and 
concessions : thus interposing between the preten- 
sions and licentiousness of force, the principles of 
international law. 

In the sixteenth century, the events and conse- 
quences of the Eeformation gave to this law a great 
and rapid development. Under the impulse of that 
European struggle, the ideas, sentiments, and in- 



80 CHRISTIAN" SOCIETIES. 

terests of different nations were extended and 
united. After a century of religious wars, fed by- 
political ambitions, it became necessary to enter 
into a compromise, a pacification, between the two 
powerful parties, Catholic and Protestant, who were 
arrayed against each other in combat. The Treaty 
of Westphalia established the foundations of re- 
ligious peace, and the balance of power in Europe. 
Grrotius reduced to legal maxims the work of 
Henry IV. and Eichelieu, even before it was 
definitively concluded. The law of nations be- 
came a great system and a great fact generally 
accepted. 

Since that epoch, a new power, general civilization, 
the universal progress of minds and manners, above 
all, the spirit of politics, have given to this law much 
more distinctness and empire. When I reflect on 
the extent to which it has been, in our days, misin- 
terpreted, and the licence with which it has been 
violated, I almost hesitate to use this language. It 
is a lamentable peculiarity of our time, that the 
spectacles which most forcibly strike the eye, are 
those which are more than ever opposed to the as- 
pirations of the thought. Nevertheless we cannot 
deny that progress, although far below the desire 



CHRISTIAN SOCIETIES. 81 

of sound judgments and honest hearts, is real and 
extensive. We have seen the most offensive violations 
of national rights attempted and accomplished, the 
most serious attacks made upon justice and good 
sense in the relations of states ; but these outrages 
have not been permanent, and we have also seen 
them destroyed almost as soon as they were per- 
petrated. Those which have lasted, such, for in- 
stance, as the partition of Poland, have been stricken 
by a European anathema, which renders them 
burdensome to their possessors, and raises itself as a 
powerful obstacle against the renewal of similar acts, 
or at least against the probability of their durable 
success. The follies and iniquities of force were, in 
former times, more easily tolerated ; they have 
abounded, and may perhaps still abound, in our own 
age ; but they scarcely ever fail to be recognized, 
denounced, and compelled to pause, or even to fall 
before the reaction of the justice and truth which 
are the objects of their attack. The friends of na- 
tional right have cause for regret, but none for dis- 
couragement. Even in the days of trial of the 
Christian faith, it is the honour and privilege of 
Christian civilization, that the evil cannot extinguish 

g- 



82 CHRISTIAN SOCIETIES. 

the good ; that the struggle between good and evil 
principles continues through all chances, and that 
the future approaches nearer and nearer, which will 
assuredly falsify and destroy the mischievous works 
of the present. 



83 



CHAP. XV. 

THE LAW OF NATIONS. 

I take the Law of Nations in its most extended 
and exalted sense. This law was for a long time 
almost entirely restricted to questions springing from 
the relations of governments between themselves, 
without reference to the condition of the peoples 
whose destinies they control. Diplomacy seldom 
troubled itself to inquire, scarcely wanted to know, 
what were the internal system, institutions, degrees, 
or forms of political civilization of the States between 
whom it negotiated peace or war, alliances or ri- 
valries. Since the spirit of reform or revolution has 
agitated nearly all the nations of Europe, and that 
the majority of governments are engaged in contest 
with this formidable alternative, the sphere of na- 
tional right has greatly extended, and external policy 
is called upon to take into consideration and solve 



34 THE LAW OF NATIONS. 

facts and problems much more complicated than 
those with which it was formerly occupied. To 
questions of extent or territorial configuration, of 
European equilibrium, of political ties or commercial 
relations, are now added those which emanate from 
the connection between government and people, from 
the reciprocal claims of power and liberty in the 
different states, from the intestine struggles of 
parties, the variety of their principles, their strength, 
and their chances of success. External policy is 
compelled to look carefully on all these facts, and to 
regulate in a great measure its attitude and resolu- 
tions according to their bearing. An appreciation of 
the internal system of States, of their troubles and 
vicissitudes ; a comparison between the rights of 
princes and people, and a solution of the questions of 
principle or prudence which present themselves on 
this subject, enter, in these days, into the domain of 
national law. 

Italy has been, for ages, the theatre of diplomatic 
and warlike rivalry between the great European 
powers. Germany, Spain, and France, have ardently 
contended there for territory and supremacy. But 
in this contest they listened only to ambition and 
force; they cared little whether the various sections 



THE LAW OF NATIONS. 85 

of Italy were governed in any specific manner ; they 
neither felt themselves bound to form an opinion nor 
to adopt a course with regard to the internal system 
of the kingdom of Naples, or of the Eoman States ; 
nor to support either by negotiation or even by arms. 
To-day, the old questions of rivalry and of the 
balance of European power are still in agitation ; but 
questions of the internal government and system of 
Italy herself are added to them, and have even 
taken the first place : a great advance of justice and 
elevation in the external policy of Europe, but a 
heavy additional burden for those who have to put 
their hands to the work. 

It belongs to the Law of Nations alone to distribute 
this burden equitably. This law has not disappeared 
with increasing complication ; the extension of its do- 
main has not altered its authority ; because the rights 
of the people have entered into the Law of Nations, 
the rights of governments have not been banished 
therefrom ; when liberty wins her spurs, power does 
not surrender up its sword, and we have not rejected 
the violences and falsehoods of absolute power to 
adopt the similar extravagances of universal suffrage. 
Whether new or old, the questions which in their 
several relations disturb Christian society, can only 

G 3 



86 THE LAW OF NATIONS. 

be efficaciously solved by respect for, and according 
to the principles of, the Law of Nations. Beyond 
this, nothing remains but a state of revolution, which 
is neither more nor less than barbarism forcibly in- 
truded into the midst of civilization. 



87 



CHAP. XVI. 

THE INDEPENDENCE OF ITALY. 

The severest result of war, conquest, can only lega- 
lize and irrevocably establish itself by assimilation of 
peoples. History relates, in every page, the tale of 
victorious ambition and hopeless resistance, of pro- 
vinces and nations incessantly changing their masters. 
It explains the causes of the successes and overthrows, 
of the dismemberment and aggrandizement of States. 
So long as the vanquished are not sufficiently con- 
founded with the victors to forget their defeat, and 
submit with patience to their new condition, the 
conquest remains an act of violence which treaties 
may recognize, which superior force and long con- 
tinuance may maintain, but which will never cease 
to be contested, oppressive, and precarious. 

Such was the character of the conquests of Austria 
in Italy. Despite their rule so often re-established, 
despite the personal moderation and ability of some 

G 4 



88 THE INDEPENDENCE OF ITALY. 

of their princes, the Austrians never succeeded in 
making their Italian subjects fellow-countrymen; 
they were always in their Italian possessions, con- 
querors and foreigners. 

To expel the stranger, to liberate herself from 
foreign dominion, was with the Italians merely a 
question of opportunity and force ; independence 
became, with them, a national and natural passion. 
When, at my request, King Louis Philippe sent M. 
Eossi to Koine, I was well acquainted with the past 
life and sentiments of the new ambassador. " You 
know as well as I do," I said to him, " that Italy can- 
not contend alone and by herself with Austria ; fresh 
revolutions and great European wars can alone fur- 
nish her with the opportunity and means. We are 
convinced that the interests of France, the interest 
of her liberties as well as of her government, of her 
permanent greatness as of her existing happiness, 
command her and us to avoid revolutions and new 
wars. All that can be done, without compromising 
European order and peace, for the good of Italy, for 
the redress of her wrongs, for the independence and 
internal reform of the different governments, we are 
ready to do to the utmost of our power. But the 
interest of France is our first duty and the rule of 



THE LSDEPEXDEXCE OF ITALY. 89 

our policy : you have become a Frenchman ; I feel 
convinced that you have made up your mind to serve 
France and her policy above all other considerations, 
in Italy as elsewhere." He had thus resolved, in 
fact, both as a man of honour and of superior mind : 
he comprehended to a particle the position of his 
old and new countries. While his mission lasted, 
he transacted the affairs of both in mutual accor- 
dance; and when new revolutions came on, when 
M. Kossi, having discharged his duty to France, re- 
sumed the hope of independence for Italy, while 
devoting himself to the cause of the national impulse, 
he embarked in the struggle against the spirit of re- 
volution. In that struggle he lost his life, and found 
his glory. 

In such circumstances and in presence of such 
chances, when the yearnings of the Italians towards 
independence burst forth, the conscience of Europe 
became excited. But under the tempest of the 
spirit of revolution and ambition, the Italians have 
unnecessarily and heavily compromised their posi- 
tion and enterprise. 

It was already a great peril and a serious misfor- 
tune for them to have been compelled to seek foreign 
aid, and foreign aid of the most powerful character, 



SO THE INDEPENDENCE OF ITALY. 

to conquer their independence. They had the good 
fortune to find, in the sovereign of France, a prince 
engaged from his youth in their cause, eager to 
acquit himself towards them, and who has contented 
himself with an extremely moderate reward in re- 
turn for an immense service. It had already been 
frequently declared beyond the Alps, " 1/ Italia Java 
da se." France has done for Italy, what Italy was 
evidently unable to do for herself. If Italy had been 
told beforehand, that to secure her independence, to 
be delivered from foreigners, would only cost her 
Savoy and Nice, and that the new strangers who had 
conquered for her would return peaceably to their 
own land, would leave her in possession of herself, 
could such a result have appeared probable, and 
would not the Italians have congratulated them- 
selves upon it, as upon an unexpected happiness ? 

But they are not contented. It has not sufficed 
for them to be delivered from foreign rule; they 
have, at the same time, raised other questions and 
attempted other enterprises. They have undertaken, 
throughout all Italy, to overthrow established govern- 
ments, and to achieve complete conquest for the 
benefit of a new and single master. They have gone 
far beyond claiming the right of a nation against a 



THE INDEPENDENCE OF ITALY. 91 

foreign yoke ; they have placed in the very heart of 
Italy, the rights of peoples in struggle with the 
rights of princes, the longings after innovation in 
contest with sentiments of fidelity, and general pa- 
triotism in arms against local patriotism. To the 
difficulties and perils of foreign war, they have 
added the difficulties and perils of civil war; the 
conquest of independence has served as an instru- 
ment to the conquests of ambition ; revolution has 
taken the place of national rights. 

For this violent and hazardous conduct, the Italians, 
I am aware, offer an explanation which they look 
upon as peremptory. The overthrow of the old go- 
vernments was, they say, indispensable to the con- 
quest of their independence. Austria had at Flo- 
rence, Modena, Parma, and Naples, even in Eome 
itself, allies infeoffed in their empire ; it was neces- 
sary to destroy these instruments of foreign rule to 
destroy the foreign rule itself. u We have," they add, 
" attempted a work of internal revolution, because 
the success of the work of national independence 
could only be secured at that price." 

Here I recognize the fundamental error, the fatal 
passion, which pervert and compromise, and have 
frequently ruined, the noblest and most lawful en- 



92 THE IXDEPEXDEXCE OF ITALY. 

terprises. Kegular policy, which considers different 
facts and rights, and respects all liberties, has its 
own difficulties and doubtful hazards. It requires 
long and reiterated efforts of prudence, equity, and 
perseverance to obtain successes often incomplete 
and always contested. Exclusive, fiery spirits do 
not resign themselves to this task ; to escape it they 
rush into opposite extremes, they have recourse to 
violence that they may dispense with management 
and patience. They find themselves in face of old 
adversaries or uncertain allies ; they shrink from the 
penalties of daily combat to retain or vanquish them ; 
they prefer declaring against them war to the death, 
to leading with them a toilsome life ; they kill them 
to avoid opposing force to their force, liberty to their 
liberty. Thus difficulties and dangers are created 
much more formidable than those which are sought 
to be avoided ; positions are complicated which might 
remain natural ; the future is compromised to evade 
the embarrassments of the present; revolutionary 
war supersedes political contest; hatreds and fears 
are suffered to predominate ; blind passions, to which 
men often sacrifice justice, liberty, and even success. 
It is true, Austria had, amongst the greater part 
of the Italian princes, declared or secret allies, who 



THE INDEPENDENCE OF ITALY. 93 

acknowledged her preponderance and promoted her 
policy. But why? Because they believed their 
safety, their very existence, to be menaced by re- 
volutions ; because they regarded Austria as the 
strongest power in Italy, and always reckoned upon 
her victory. More than once several amongst them, 
particularly the Kings of Xaples and the Grand 
Dukes of Tuscany, have found the Austrian su- 
premacy extremely oppressive, and have tried to 
throw it off. The House of Bourbon was not in 
natural intimacy with the House of Austria, yet it 
has recently proved at Parma and G-aeta that no 
reverse could make it lose the sentiment of its dig- 
nity and greatness. The Austrian princes established 
at Florence had contracted for their Italian country 
a sincere and liberal attachment ; but when, both 
within and without, a great danger assailed them, it 
was towards Austria that they turned their eyes, it 
was from Austria that they expected and received 
effectual aid. Supposing this general position to 
have been changed, that Austria had lost her pos- 
sessions and empire in Italy, that supremacy there 
had passed to an Italian power, strong enough in 
itself, and sufficiently supported in Europe to defend 
Italian independence against Austrian ambition ; — 



94 THE INDEPENDENCE OF ITALY. 

will it be believed that the Italian princes could not, 
under those conditions, have accommodated them- 
selves to this new state of Italy ? or that they would 
have carried the love of absolute power, associated 
with painful dependence, to the extent of conspiring 
together and endangering themselves for vanquished 
Austria ? Princes are not so faithful or unchange- 
able. At Naples, Florence, and Rome, they would 
have accepted and supported the independence of 
Italy, had they believed her sufficiently strong for 
self-defence, or could they have found in that course 
their personal safety. They would have had, under 
their own eyes, and at their own gates, a great ex- 
ample of such a change in attitude and policy. "What 
Italian power was more Austrian than Piedmont ? 
Where did the court of Vienna for a long period 
find more deference and zeal than at Turin ? Other 
times have arrived and have opened other perspec- 
tives to the Sardinian court : it has not hesitated to 
change thoroughly its alliances and paths. Without 
the same temptations, the courts of Rome, Naples, 
and Florence, would not have been more obstinate ; 
they would have taken, in emancipated Italy, their 
rank, their influence, their new course of policy, and 
they would have found in independence a little more 



THE INDEPENDENCE OF ITALY. 95 

labour, but also more dignity and strength, than in 
subordination. 

Undoubtedly, if the liberation of Italy had only 
been attempted and achieved on such conditions^ 
without internal overthrow, and without the spolia- 
tion of the Italian princes, the enterprise would still 
have had its difficulties and dangers. But they 
would not have been found insurmountable ; and I 
have no hesitation in saying that, under all circum- 
stances, the law of nations respected, and peace 
maintained in Italy, would have given to Italian in- 
dependence better chances than she will find in the 
attempt to establish the exclusive rule of Piedmont, 
founded on so many ruins. 



96 



CHAP. XVIL 

LIBERTY IN ITALY. 

The Piedmontese conquest does not secure liberty 
to Italy better than it secures independence. 

The best reminiscence that will endure of Count 
Cavour is, that he was a sincere advocate for libertj^; 
that . he really respected it, even on the part of his 
opponents, more than is usually practised in revolu- 
tionary times. He did not fear being contradicted, 
and steadily believed that liberty brought him more 
power than danger. 

It must also be acknowledged that a specific and 
precious liberty, — freedom in religious faith, — has 
made, and is at present making, in Italy, remark- 
able progress. It was very recently unknown, and 
roughly rejected when first attempting to appear. 
Italians were not permitted to be Protestants, and 
even foreign Protestants were only allowed to exer- 
cise their worship in certain districts, and under 



LIBEETY IN ITALY. 97 

many restrictions. Consciences are now emancipated 
beyond the Alps ; no one is any longer compelled to 
. advertise a faith he does not follow, and Christians 
of different communions can assemble and pray 
according to their creed. 

In this, however, the incoherence of facts is mani- 
fest and offensive. Liberty of conscience in Italy is, 
at the same time, in progress and in check ; while 
Protestants acquire it, with the Catholics it is com- 
promised. As I have just stated, the free consti- 
tution of the different Churches forms an essential 
portion of religious liberty ; the new government of 
Italy violently attacks the liberties of the Catholic 
Church, not only in its relations with the State, but 
in its individual and internal organisation. The 
new Churches become free in Italy, while the 
liberty of the old Italian Church is in restraint 
and peril. 

There are words which awaken such expanded 
ideas and such sanguine hopes that they possess 
great power in themselves, almost independently of 
the corresponding facts. The word liberty possesses 
this prestige ; by its simple utterance men are 
charmed and swayed ; they feel convinced that they 
possess liberty as soon as they begin to speak of it, and 

H 



98 LIBERTY IN ITALY. 

they readily believe that it is given to them because 
they have promised it to themselves. There is no 
illusion more deceptive to those who give way to it 3 
and more vexatious to those who are not under its 
influence. To bear fruit, liberty must be real, and 
it is only real under conditions to which words and 
promises cannot suffice. 

The first of these conditions is, that liberty should 
exist for all ; that all parties and citizens should 
equally enjoy it, in fact as in right, especially for the 
defence of established interests ; for of all rights, 
defence is the most to be respected. As long as 
liberty is a weapon on the one side more than a 
defence on the other ; while it is not surrounded by 
general guarantees which assure its exercise to the 
weak as well as to the strong, let it not be said that 
it is conquered and established; let not advantage be 
taken of its name to impose upon the country which 
expects, or to laud the power which boasts of it. 
Power has no right to call itself liberal except when 
it honestly accepts liberty, instead of using it as a 
means of trickery and falsehood. Nations can only 
be free when they are not dupes ; and there is no 
trickery more contemptible, nor imposition more 
ridiculous, than a perpetual invocation of the name 



LIBERTY EST ITALY. 99 

of liberty when it is neither equally dispensed nor 
effectually secured. 

Another condition, equally imperious, is required 
before a country can belieye or call itself free, viz., 
that liberty shall be allied to that security of persons, 
of interests, and of common life, which is the essential 
and leading want of society. When what is called 
liberty disturbs and impedes, instead of protecting, 
the daily relations and affairs of men ; when it is 
incessantly mixed up with threats and violence ; 
when, instead of maintaining peace in the State, it 
provokes discord, — this ceases to be liberty, and 
becomes anarchy; a position still more deplorable, 
because it entails with its inherent evils violent 
reactions in which liberty, — even temperate and 
legitimate liberty, — most miserably perishes. 

I repeat here merely common-place facts, of which 
our own country, and the present generation in its 
brief passage, have, in more than one instance, 
encountered harsh experience. But who could deny 
that these well-known events are not too truly re- 
peated at present in Italy, particularly in the king- 
dom of Naples ? I have no taste for the collection 
of repulsive facts, or for their concentration in 
gloomy pictures : but beyond all doubt it is not 

H 2 



100 LIBEKTY IN ITALY. 

liberty which now reigns in Southern Italy; and, 
in point of arbitrary proceedings and violence, its 
masters of to-day would gain nothing in comparison 
with its kings of yesterday. 

" We know this well/' exclaim honest and enlight- 
ened minds ; " but there are no means of escaping 
from such a crisis; this is the natural course of 
things ; to reach liberty we must pass through revo- 
lution." 

I could comprehend, and without fully accepting 
it, I could admit this excuse to a certain extent, 
if, in the south of Italy, the revolution had been 
a natural, spontaneous, national and controlling 
movement, such as may have happened elsewhere. 
Wrongs were not wanting to the Neapolitans, and 
they were justified in demanding and compelling 
from their government important reforms ; but facts 
have proved that they were not themselves inclined 
to take the initiative in a revolution, and to push 
it to the extreme point of expelling their kings. 
Foreigners, armed foreigners, the bands of Garibaldi, 
were required to commence this work ; and even when 
successfully begun, the enterprise encountered obsti- 
nate resistance, not only from the young king and the 
Neapolitan army, but from a considerable part of the 



LIBERTY IN ITALY. 101 

population. The battalions of Piedmont were called 
in to aid the Graribaldians, and to enable King Victor 
Emmanuel to besiege King Francis II. in Graeta, that 
the revolution might appear to triumph, and estab- 
lish civil war in Naples in anticipation of liberty. 

I would ask the following question of all persons 
uninfluenced by prejudice and declared partisanship : 
If the Austrian rule alone had been abolished in 
Italy, if the movement of independence and liberal 
reform, which such an event could not fail to excite 
in all the Italian states, had developed itself without 
involving territorial overthrows and conquests, can it 
be doubted that at this day there would have been 
in the kingdom of Naples more liberty, justice, and 
prosperity, and better securities for the future, than 
has been conferred upon it by the parliament of 
Turin ? 

I have much respect and love for the constitu- 
tional system ; but I do not consider it an all-power- 
ful panacea. It is not enough to establish in a 
country elections, chambers, and parliamentary 
government to deliver it from all its ills, to give it 
the full advantages held forth, and to secure it from 
the fatal consequences of the errors that may be 
committed. The conditions for the salutary govern- 

H 3 



102 LIBEETY IjST ITALY. 

ment of nations are more complicated ; all interests 
are not satisfied, and all rights are not secured by 
substituting a constitution in place of an old auto- 
cracy, and it is quite possible to institute a parlia- 
ment in Turin without establishing liberty in Italy. 



103 



CHAP. XVIII. 



ITALIAN UNITY. 



But there is yet another panacea ; the unity of Italy, 
which is to cure all the evils of the country, to ele- 
vate its strength to the level of its name, and to 
realize abroad and at home its most brilliant hopes. 

If we were still in the middle ages, in presence of 
the foreigner, alternately German or French, in- 
cessantly invading and devastating Italy, given up 
to never-ending intestine discords, and perpetually at 
war with herself, from prince to prince, from faction 
to faction, from city to city, from street to street, I 
could understand the passion for Italian unity, 
prosecuted at any cost, and even with little proba- 
bilit) 7 of success. It was in the name of that single 
idea, and under the hand of a single master, that 
Italy could then entertain some hope of struggling 
against the foreigners, and of putting an end to the 
domestic quarrels so mutually destructive. I am not 

H 4 



104 ITALIAN UNITY. 

surprised that the great patriots of that time should 
have so ardently preached Italian unity ; if the ex- 
ternal enfranchisement and the internal pacification 
of their country had been practicable, it was only to 
be obtained on that condition. 

But we are no longer in the middle ages; for a 
long time the different Italian states have ceased to 
wage mutual war; the Italians no longer quarrel 
amongst themselves ; they have no longer occasion to 
seek a single power to impose peace on all. And as 
regards foreigners, a new era is opened to them ; in 
fact, and at present, the sword of France has de- 
livered them from Austrian supremacy; in principle, 
and for the future, the idea that Italy ought to be 
independent, and that no foreign power should be 
permitted to rule there, is rapidly becoming a 
European idea — a maxim of public European law. 
France has proclaimed it ; England supports it with 
all her influence; already the greater part of the 
governments of Europe rally round it. As a security 
against the foreigner, Italian unity is an anachron- 
ism; neither for her internal peace nor for her 
independence does Italy require, in the present day, 
a single Italian power. Her guarantees lie in other 
conditions. 



ITALIAN UNITY. 105 

Useless to independence, Italian unity is even 
more useless to liberty. When, after a long labour, 
unity of government is finally and permanently 
established in a great state, liberty may attempt to 
take its turn. The work is difficulty as we well 
know, and subject to many thwarting obstacles; 
nevertheless, I do not believe it to be impossible, 
neither ought it to be so considered, for in the bosom 
of a great country, and in presence of a great 
central authority, there is no choice except between 
political liberty and the slow, and perhaps brilliant, 
but infallibly inherent decline of absolute power. 
The condition of a country is very different in which, 
far from being already established, unity of govern- 
ment has no existence, and is struggling to maintain 
itself: for a long time it can only be sought after, or 
obtained at the expense of liberty. 

The history of all the European states, of our own 
above the rest, is at hand to substantiate this fact. 
We praise, and on just grounds, the national and 
political unity of France ; but what is the price at 
which it has been won ? At the cost of a long series 
of internal commotions, and of a struggle protracted 
through several ages against the liberties, aristocratic 
and popular, of the different portions of the terri- 



106 ITALIAN UNITY. 

tory, provinces, towns, and rural districts succes- 
sively assembled and associated together. In this 
contest nearly all those liberties perished, as sacrifices 
to the achievement of unity; and, to-day we are 
painfully endeavouring to reconquer our liberties, 
general and local, without suffering unity to perish 
in its turn. In embarking in pursuit of unity, Italy, 
I admit, will enter on this rough career with the ad- 
vantages of a more advanced civilization and superior 
political intelligence ; but she will not, on that ac- 
count, escape the violences, iniquities, sufferings, and 
dangers of the enterprise ; and she will find them 
still more serious, as, by her natural constitution and 
past history, she is less prepared for and adapted to 
unity. I have no desire to repeat here what is every- 
where proclaimed, and what the sound, practical 
sense of the Emperor Xapoleon I. admitted at the 
very moment in which his conquering and despotic 
imagination indulged itself in the perspective of the 
unity which Italy now covets. It is evident that the 
geography and history of Italy are opposed to unity ; 
her territorial configuration renders a sole centre very 
difficult to determine and maintain : a single central 
power will ever be in combat with the national 
prides, local traditions, popular sentiments, and ob- 



ITALIAN UNITY. 107 

stinate prejudices of people as well as of princes 
It is already a work of extreme labour to dethrone 
effectively a dynasty; but nations and capitals are 
made to abdicate with much more difficulty than 
kings. 

Strange spectacle ! In the name of nationality 
the enterprise in which we participate is attempted, 
and yet it begins by rooting out old and illustrious 
nations. It is possible that under a violent impulse 
of passion to deliver themselves from a foreign yoke 
or a hateful system, and under the' cloak of what is 
called universal suffrage, these nations might sacrifice 
themselves and their past ; but the sacrifices of passion 
are precarious ; reminiscences, habits, antipathies, 
regrets, will soon resume their empire, and excite 
difficulties in the work of unity, increasing from 
day to day. How will it be if the state which seeks 
to invade all should not be remarkably strong or il- 
lustrious in itself, if it should scarcely equal some of 
those it pretends to absorb? When the French 
monarchy conquered, by force or negotiation, the de- 
pendencies which made it so great, it long remained 
immeasurably superior to them in resources and re- 
putation ; it was a powerful state, seizing upon and 
incorporating inferior provinces and populations. 



108 ITALIAN UNITY. 

The position of Piedmont in Italy is extremely dif- 
ferent ; it is a small sovereignty which, by favour of 
an external crisis and a mighty foreign aid, attempts 
the sudden absorption of other states, some of which 
are at least its equal. A bad point of departure for 
acting in Italy the part of Louis XIV. in Europe. 
And in comparison with the pretensions of M. de 
Cavour, those of Louis XIV. are extremely moderate, 
for if he wrested from the princes his neighbours 
many provinces, he never dreamed of deposing them, 
or of appropriating all their dominions to himself. 

In the name of Italian unity, Piedmont undertakes 
quite a different affair from the conquest of king- 
doms and the deposition of kings : it undertakes to 
change the entire system of the Catholic Church, 
and its position in the whole world, by dethroning 
the Papacy. 



109 



CHAP. XIX. 

THE PAPACY. 

I hate questioned the policy of Piedmont towards 
the Papacy in the name of religious liberty ; I 
have now to consider it in the name of the law of 
nations. 

I admit, let the suggestion come either from Count 
de Cavour or M. Mazzini, that the new Italian State 
it is intended to found, whether kingdom or republic, 
requires possession of Rome, — that Rome should be 
its capital. Rome is the moral metropolis of Italy, 
the only city in favour of which the other historic 
capitals of the different states can abdicate their 
title and surrender their pride. Unless the sovereign 
of the new Italian kingdom resides at Rome, he will 
not be looked upon as King of Italy : Italy will be a 
single state, without its natural and only capital. 
To render Italian unity real in the eyes and opinion 
of the world, Rome must be its seat. To become 



110 THE PAPACY. 

really the head of Italian unity, Piedmont is con- 
demned to dethrone the Papacy in Eome. 

In plain fact, to attain its object, Piedmont must 
trample under foot the law of nations by despoiling 
the Pope of the states of which he is sovereign, as it 
crushes the rights of religious liberty by overthrowing 
the constitution of the Catholic Church of which the 
Pope is the head. 

I might pause here ; such necessities condemn the 
policy they impose. But a system springs up in aid 
of this policy, and assumes not only to excuse but to 
justify it in principle : a system supported by liberals 
and sincere Christians. I do not propose to discuss it 
here at full, neither do I wish to evade it altogether. 

Starting from this general and legitimate principle, 
that religious and civil society, spiritual and tem- 
poral power, are essentially distinct and ought to be 
separated, two absolute consequences may be drawn ; 
the one, that between the two societies and powers 
there should be no alliance whatever ; the other, that 
in Eome, where the two powers are united, this union 
ought to be abolished, and temporal authority en- 
tirely removed from the Papacy, thus reduced to its 
exclusively spiritual supremacy. I have already said 
what I think in the first case ; I look upon the second 



THE PAPACY. Ill 

as one of those examples in which logic stifles justice 
and reason. 

The union of spiritual and temporal power in the 
Papacy has not been a fact systematically pursued 
and accomplished in the name of a rational principle 
or an ambitious aspiration : reason and ambition 
have both had their share in it ; but it is necessity, 
close and continued necessity, which has produced 
and supported this fact through many opposing ob- 
stacles. In fulfilling and to enable it to fulfil, in 
exercising and to enable it to exercise its spiritual 
power, the Papacy requires absolute independence 
and a certain degree of material authority ; it has 
acquired both, originally in Eome, then in the neigh- 
bourhood of Eome, and finally in other parts of Italy, 
successively and under different titles : at first, as a 
municipal magistracy ; secondly, in virtue of terri- 
torial proprietorship ; and thirdly, under the title of 
full and direct sovereignty. Possessions and govern- 
ment accrued to the Papacy as a natural appendage 
and necessary support of its high religious position, 
and in proportion as that position developed itself. 
The donations of Pepin and Charlemagne are amongst 
the principal incidents of that development at once 
spiritual and temporal, begun early and seconded by 



112 THE PAPACY. 

the instincts of nations and the favour of kings. By 
becoming head of the Church, and that he might con- 
tinue so substantially, the Pope became also sovereign 
of a state. 

Thus brought on by the obvious course of things 
and the force of situations, the union of the two 
powers in the Papacy has also led to a natural al- 
though unforeseen result ; it has established their 
complete distinction everywhere else. u It is neces- 
sary," said M. Odilon-Barrot, with sound reason, in 
the Legislative Assembly*, "that the two powers 
should be confounded in the Eoman States to ensure 
their separation in the rest of the world." Many 
centuries before M. Odilon-Barrot, the instinct of 
Christian communities and the general interest of 
European civilisation had declared the same neces- 
sity. As a temporal sovereign, the Pope was formid- 
able to no one ; but he derived from his sovereignty 
an effective security for his own independence and 
moral authority ; the equal of kings in rank without 
being their rival in temporal power, he could every- 
where defend the dignity and rights of spiritual 
order, the true source and basis of his power. That 
the popes have often abused this position, as well to 

* At the sitting of the 20th October, 1849. 



THE PAPACY. 113 

embarrass as to serve the sovereigns with whom they 
were in contest or alliance, no enlightened mind can 
dispute, and the friends of right in general, of all 
rights, ought to be the first to acknowledge it ; but 
it is not less true that it is under the shelter of 
its little temporal sovereignty that the Papacy has 
proclaimed and supported in Europe the essential 
difference between the Church and the State, the 
distinction of the two powers, of their reciprocal do- 
mains and privileges. This fact, the safeguard and 
honour of modern civilization, has derived birth and 
strength from the double character of the Papacy, 
and amply compensates for the abuses practised by 
the popes in their double empire. 

What is acting in our own days ? To this great 
historical fact, which has maintained itself through 
so many ages and vicissitudes, a system is opposed. 
Xot only the distinction and general separation of 
Church and State, of spiritual and temporal power, 
but their utter incompatibility, under any emergency 
or in any form or measure, is assumed as a principle ; 
and under the influence of logic, to follow out to the 
end the consequences of this principle, enlightened 
minds forget history, honest men hold as of no 



114 THE PAPACY. 

account the law of nations., and liberals mutilate 
liberty. 

I slight neither systems nor logic ; they are salutary 
and brilliant exercises in which human intellect dis- 
plays its fecundity and vigour in pursuit of truth. 
But when a system reaches such consequences and 
exacts such sacrifices, I mistrust the system itself, 
and I reject its pretensions to absolute truth as to 
universal dominion. These rigorous and bold arguers 
pause too readily : they should advance farther in 
the road in which they are entangled ; they should 
acknowledge that in the Papacy the spiritual and 
temporal powers are intimately united and essential 
to each other, and that they ought to stand or fall 
together ; they ought to avow openly that, in attack- 
ing and overthrowing the temporal power of the 
Pope, his spiritual authority, that is to say the 
Catholic Church itself, is attacked and overthrown. 
They should proclaim the necessity and right of ac- 
complishing this great revolutionary destruction, as 
the absolute republicans proclaim the right and 
necessitj^ of abolishing every form of royalty, every 
power not elected by the people, and of ancient date, 
no matter to what extent liberty and national rights 
may suffer in the process. And to encourage them- 



THE PAPACY. 115 

selves under these sacrifices, they should assert and 
believe that the future will make up for the suffer- 
ings and injustices they inflict at present. 

I am no idolater of the past ; society changes, in- 
stitutions become effete ; fresh wants call for fresh 
gratifications ; new ideas engender new facts ; it is the 
peculiar characteristic and honour of human nature 
that it alone on earth is in a state of mobility, capable 
of progress as of fall ; that progressive generations are 
not circumscribed within the same narrow condition 
as in an eternal prison, and that, whether assisted or 
opposed, they march, each at its own pace, towards 
the future open to their ambition. But while taking 
part in this continued although unequal impulse of 
humanity, the undertakers of reform (I speak only of 
those who are honest and sincere) fall into two capital 
errors : they forget that the great facts which have 
endured so long have assuredly had some strong 
grounds for their existence, and they do not foresee 
that in the social edifice great voids are not easily 
filled up. The Christian world has now a paramount 
question to resolve, which stands thus : Which of 
these two enterprises is the least impracticable ; — to 
introduce and establish in the Catholic Church civil 
liberty, or to maintain Christian order in Catholic 

I 2 



116 THE PAPACY. 

countries by overthrowing the foundations of the 
Catholic Church, and to effect this overthrow by in- 
vading the liberty and rights of nations ? 

Let no honest minds beguile themselves on this 
point ; a choice must be made between these two 
attempts. 

To reduce those to whom they are submitted to 
the necessity of accepting the second, it is affirmed 
that in its own States the temporal power of the 
Papacy is not susceptible of reform, and that for its 
maintenance it is compelled to condemn the popula- 
tions who live under its law to a detestable and 
incurable government. It is at this price, they say, 
that Europe would purchase the continuance of ex- 
isting order. Does Europe desire, or has she a right 
to demand this ? 

I might, as has already been done, and not with- 
out just reason, dispute the extent of the vices of the 
Papal government ; I might argue that its acts are 
less mischievous than its maxims, abuses more com- 
mon than excesses, power more inert and impeding 
than tyrannical ; I might say that amongst the re- 
forms demanded, several have been already accom- 
plished, and that, if others have failed, the fault rests 
as much with the subjects as with the sovereign. I 



THE PAPACY. 117 

have no wish to enter into this comparative examina- 
tion of good and evil with their extenuating circum- 
stances ; a question of equity rather than of policy. 
I admit that the Eoman government demands exten- 
sive reform ; but I affirm that the disease is not in- 
curable, that the means of recovery are not wanting, 
and that Europe is not called upon for its own es- 
sential repose to condemn the Eoman populations to 
endure without hope the vices of their legislature. 

I introduce Europe here because Europe has to 
take her part, and a great part, in the reproaches 
hurled against the Eoman government ; she has re-^ 
cognized and proclaimed the necessity of reforms ; 
even more, she has demanded them herself, thus 
seconding complaints and opening the career to 
hopes. Further, she has neither insisted on nor lent 
her hand to their execution. Some states have ak 
lowed Eoman affairs to fall again into the old track ; 
others have urged Eome to the policy of inertia and 
reaction. 

This is either to ignore entirely the essential de- 
fects of the Eoman government, or to become their 
voluntary accomplice. By tradition and situation, by 
nature and habit, that government is motionless and 
weak; its maxims and manners repudiate change; 

I 3 



118 THE PAPACY. 

and when it is compelled to admit that change is 
necessary, it often wants strength to surmount obsta- 
cles ; in this difficult career it requires encourage- 
ment and support. Europe herself, Catholic or 
political Europe, has alone sufficient influence with 
the Papal government to impart to it under such 
circumstances the resolution and prop it requires. 

As to the extent of the reforms to be introduced 
into the Eoman government, I do not pause here to 
examine in detail those that are at once necessary and 
practicable. To form a sound opinion on these points, 
things should be examined more closely, and means 
compared with ends with more precision than I am 
at this moment able to exercise. I only preserve re- 
miniscences and general views. The more I reflect 
on the subject, the more I satisfy myself that the 
effective reform of the Eoman government failed, 
not because means were wanting, but from a defi- 
ciency in the boldness of spirit and steadiness of will 
necessary to accept and apply them. 

In these days, there are words and appearances 
which congeal governments with terror, and conjure 
up ab3^sses before them where they ought to find 
havens of refuge. Such is the effect produced upon 
many moderate and conservative politicians by re- 



THE PAPACY. " IIS 

publican names, forms, and institutions ; according 
to their perception, these terms imply the utter ruii 
of order and power. What would have happened, 
nevertheless, I ask of all independent and clear- 
sighted judges of State affairs, if a great pope — a 
Gregory VII. or a Sixtus V. — understanding his age 
and a new condition of society, and without deceiving 
himself as to the dangers of the Papacy in his own 
family, had given or rather restored to the cities of 
the Eoman States that strong municipal indepen- 
dence which approaches so closely to political au- 
tonomy, and had called upon them almost to govern 
themselves, while still maintaining over them the title 
and some of the essential rights of sovereignty ? I 
do not believe that the Pope could become the king 
of a central constitutional monarchy ; the nature and 
complexity of his power render this mode of govern- 
ment impracticable for him; but central constitu- 
tional monarchy is not the only form of good go- 
vernment; and I do believe that the Pope may readily 
become the chief of an aggregation of cities and 
provinces, governed each in its own locality by free 
institutions and acknowledging his sovereignty, with- 
out being submitted to his absolute power. Nothing 
is more conformable to the history, manners, and 

I 4 



120 THE PAPACY. 

traditions of Italy, neither is it incompatible with 
the nature and requirements of the temporal and 
spiritual authority of the Papacy. Many, I doubt 
not, will consider this notion as a chimera ; it may 
be so, if we look only at the every-day practice of 
most governments and the lazy timidity of their 
chiefs ; but I feel convinced that, if this chimera had 
been attempted, Piedmont could not have found in 
the invasion and absorption of the Eoman States the 
facilities we have witnessed. And if, as I think, the 
attempt at Italian unity under Piedmontese do- 
minion should fail, if several of the states now 
amalgamated should reclaim their independence, if 
the Papacy, in particular, should preserve the pro- 
vinces, which still remain to it, and regain possession 
of any of those it has lost, it will be by calling on 
them to govern themselves through an energetic local 
organization, that it will re-establish and exercise its 
dominion over them without the dread of incessantly 
recurring insurrection. 



121 



CHAP. XX. 

UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE IX ITALY. 

I do not propose to discuss, in this place, universal 
suffrage in principle, and under a general point of 
view. I confine myself exclusively to the part it has 
played in Italy. 

A few days after the admission of Father Lacor- 
daire into the French Academy, and with reference 
to the speech I had made in reply to him, a man of 
talent wrote thus from Turin : " M. Gruizot appears 
to me to have fallen into an error as to the character 
of the Italian Revolution. That event was in no 
sense an overflowing of democracy, such as it is 
understood in France. It should rather be con- 
sidered aristocratic, as proceeding from the enlight- 
ened classes. The predominating idea is that of 
independence. Universal suffrage has been employed 
rather as an engine of diplomacy, and no one de- 
mands its introduction into the regular mechanism 
of government," 



122 UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE IX ITALY. 

There is truth in this language. It was not. in 
fact; democratic passion, hut the desire for national 
independence and political liberty, which occupied 
the foremost place in the Italian movement. That 
movement was the work of the higher and more 
elevated orders, far more than of the popular masses. 
They wished to expel the foreigner, and to constitute 
an Italian native country ; not to overthrow and re- 
model Italian society. 

But events are more complicated than they appear. 
This Italian movement, national rather than political, 
and political rather than social, nevertheless burst 
forth and accomplished itself under the influence and 
by the aid of the republican and democratic party, 
who had for their object in Italy an end and a revo- 
lution far more profound than the expulsion of 
foreigners and the reform of established govern- 
ments. This Italian movement was, in reality, M. 
de Cavour and M. Mazzini combined together, ex- 
tremely opposed to and mistrustful of each other, 
but mutually necessary; the one, a liberal patriot 
and an advocate for constitutional monarchy; the 
other, a revolutionary patriot proclaiming the re- 
public single and democratic as his avowed design. 
Each accepted the other as an instrument; each 



UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE IN ITALY. 123 

made concessions, and imparted his influence at 
every step to advance his individual purpose, and 
each at every advance was on the point of sepa- 
rating. 

In this alliance, or competition, — for either name 
is applicable — and at the rjoint which events have 
now reached, — M, de Cavour carried the day. Had 
he from the commencement, and like M. Mazzini, 
determined in favour of Italian unity ? Did he in- 
variably desire and endeavour to establish the Italian 
kingdom, single and constitutional, as M. Mazzini 
desired and sought to establish the Italian republic 
sole and democratic ? I cannot say ; but it is of 
little import. If M. de Cavour did not preme- 
ditate all that he accomplished, if he was gra- 
dually led on to more conquests than he sought, 
he undoubtedly accepted that situation: and if he 
only reached the end when driven to it by his 
rival, he vanquished his rival by depriving him of 
his arms. 

But this victory was dearly purchased by M, de 
Cavour ; at a higher price, in my opinion, than it is 
worth. While only seeking for his country a con- 
stitutional monarchy and a high position in Europe, 
he appropriated by force from the hands of M. Mazzini 



124 UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE IN ITALY. 

the repeated violations of the law of nations, war 
against the established Church, and an appeal al- 
ternately to insurrection and universal suffrage, to 
make or unmake governments : — in so many words, 
M. de Cavour adopted for allies principles and powers 
essentially revolutionary. 

Did M. de Cavour and his friends ever reflect on 
this ? Do people thoroughly know what universal 
suffrage is, alternately substituted for the order 
established between different states, and for that 
subsisting in the bosom of each separate state ; and 
popular will officially called in, sometimes to abolish 
international treaties, at others to set aside public 
authority ? This is simply democratic tyranny in its 
blindest pretensions, permanent revolution in place 
of law. 

What would history tell us to-day, if, in the six- 
teenth century, Charles V., on entering Switzerland 
with his troops immediately after the dissensions 
between the Catholics and Protestants, had indiscri- 
minately invited the discontented populations to vote 
for the abolition of the local governments which dis- 
pleased them, and the annexation of their territories 
to his empire ? Conquest openly pursued and pro- 
claimed is less offensive and less anti-social than in- 



UXIVEESAL SUFFRAGE IN ITALY. 125 

ternal anarchy employed to sanction the enterprises 
of foreign power and ambition. 

I say internal anarchy, for universal suffrage in- 
voked and collected in the midst of war, by one of 
the combatants, under the license of passions and the 
conflict of arms, what is it but anarchy in the sendee 
of force ? Undoubtedly there may be, there have 
been, national and legitimate insurrections which 
have delivered peoples, and have continued national 
and lawful even when obliged to have recourse to the 
aid of the stranger. When France sent her soldiers 
to the succour of the Greeks, did that make the 
struggle for independence in Greece commence by 
foreign intervention ? And when the great European 
powers recognised the Greek kingdom, did they ap- 
peal to popular suffrage as the basis of and apology 
for their determination ? They took care not to in- 
troduce into the general policy and relations of states 
so much disorder and incoherence ; they acted at 
once with more wisdom and firmness ; at first they 
allowed the Greek to undertake and prosecute their 
enfranchisement by themselves ; subsequently, when 
they saw them evince proofs of energy and constancy, 
they came to their assistance ; finally, when they ac- 
knowledged their right to independence and national 



126 UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE IN ITALY. 

existence, they openly proclaimed that great fact, 
while maintaining the principles and regular pro- 
ceedings of the law of nations. They admitted the 
new state into the European system without accept- 
ing insurrection as the permanent right of peoples, 
or universal suffrage as the supreme condition of 
international law. 

Is this what has taken place in Italy > and especially 
in the kingdom of Naples ? Can we speak of uni- 
versal suffrage in relation to a country in which 
foreign intervention has originated the movement, 
and civil war perpetuates itself after the annexation ? 

So much confusion and falsehood are incompatible 
with the policy of a great nation and a regular go- 
vernment: it should reject them at once. Instead 
of accepting blindly and precipitately the Italian 
movement in all its acts and results, now in the name 
of a pretended universal suffrage without truth or 
liberty, and now in that of a pretended fact which 
dates from yesterday and is still rudely questioned, 
we should rather apply to this great event the rules 
of public justice and sound judgment; we ought to 
disentangle from it, on the one side, all that it com- 
prises of natural and legitimate ; on the other, all that 
it includes of factitious and unjust ; we ought to de- 



UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE IN ITALY. 127 

termine in what degree it is compatible with Euro- 
pean order, the rights of other nations, the liberties 
and general interests of Christianity. On this con- 
dition only can a permanent system be established in 
Italy ; and the only system which can meet this con- 
dition interdicts nothing to the Italians which they 
have a necessity for demanding and a right to insist 
upon. 



128 



CHAP. XXI. 



THE ITALIAN CONFEDERACY. 



What do the Italians wish for ? Independence with- 
out^ free government within. The Italian confederacy 
assured these advantages to them better than can 
the Piedmontese dominion under the name of Italian 
unity. 

Unity of government is not, and never has been, 
the natural and necessary consequence of unity of 
race and speech. History abounds in examples of 
peoples of the same origin, speaking the same lan- 
guage, known in the world under the same name, 
and who have not lived under a single government, 
who would have regarded that union as their ruin, 
and would have enthusiastically defended themselves 
from it. What was Greece but an assemblage of 
small independent states united together by com- 
munity of tongue and descent, and under pressing- 
conjunctions, by a sort of federal bond ? And in 



THE ITALIAN CONFEDERACY. 129 

modem times, do not the Swiss Cantons, the United 
Provinces of Holland, the United States of America, 
in spite of remarkable differences, present the same 
features ? And through the storms of their destiny, 
have not these nations lived happily and gloriously 
under the federative system, at once united and dis- 
tinct, in different degrees and under various forms ? 

The four confederacies I have just named were 
subjected to precisely the same trial which Italy un- 
dergoes at present. Greece, Switzerland, Holland, 
and the United States of America have had to defend 
or conquer their independence abroad, their liberty 
at home. Have they been found wanting under this 
rough task ? Have they not become and continued 
nations — free and independent nations — without 
having recourse to complete unity of government ? 

Undoubtedly, the federal system has its difficulties 
and adverse chances ; what system has them not ? 
But ancient and modern history are at hand to prove 
that between peoples of the same race and language, 
confederations, or rather union without unity, may 
prove itself the most natural and effective of all 
systems for the advancement of independence and 
liberty. 

The Italians have a right to object when it is said 

K 



130 THE ITALIAN CONFEDERACY. 

that the word Italy is merely a geographical desig- 
nation. I have more than once disputed with the 
Prince de Metternich this idea, which he adopted with 
the complaisance of an inventor for the advantage of 
the Austrian policy. When millions of people have 
borne for ages the same name, spoken the same lan- 
guage, regarded the same eminent men as their 
fathers, and the same master-pieces of mind as their 
common glory, it is an ungracious task to refuse 
them their intimate relationship and title as a na- 
tion. But it is also a capital error on their part, and 
may be a fatal one, to assume that their relationship 
calls them all to the same system, and not to believe 
that they are a nation unless they all live under one 
and the same government. Not only is confederacy 
a natural and possible system in Italy, but a system 
which, in our days, presents to the Italians fewer diffi- 
culties and more chances in their favour than at any 
other epoch of their history. 

The principal obstacle to the establishment and 
durable success of an Italian confederacy was for- 
merly the excessive parcelling out of the country, 
and the great number of independent States, for the 
most part extremely small, which the federal union 
would have had to unite. Between such multiplied 



THE ITALIAN CONFEDERACY. 131 

and unequal elements a cordial understanding was 
very difficult, and dissolving intrigue abundantly easy. 
Internal dissensions and foreign plots interfered at 
every moment to counteract the plans or break trie 
engagements of the union. Nothing of the kind 
can be apprehended now; already much reduced in 
number since the middle ages, the Italian States 
will become more so under the influence of passing 
events : there are defeats, weaknesses, and extinctions 
to which the most conservative policy is compelled 
to submit. The Italian confederacy would hence- 
forth be comprised within a very limited aggregate ; 
all sufficiently equal in force to preserve indepen- 
dence in the bosom of their anion, and all great and 
high enough in the political sphere to comprehend 
and accept the necessities of the bond which would 
unite them. 

Such are, moreover, the geographical configuration 
of Italy and her position in Europe, that she is 
naturally called, and as it were devoted, to a defen- 
sive policy. The destiny of nations and places is full 
of strange contrasts. In ancient times it was Italy 
that invaded the world; it was from Eome that the 
greatest wars of aggression emanated which the world 
has ever endured ; and since that epoch, after having 

K 2 



132 THE ITALIAN CONFEDERACY. 

subdued all, Italy has incessantly seen herself a prey 
to conquest, and under the constant necessity of pro- 
tecting herself from her various assailants. In the 
present state of Europe it is evident that Italy could 
never resume the offensive ; a defensive attitude and 
policy are alone suited to her position. The federal 
system is well adapted to both, and the Italian States 
would find in their confederacy powerful guarantees 
for the independence of their common country, and 
against all yearnings of aggressive ambition on the 
part of any one or more of the united States. 

And amongst the confederated Italian States which 
would be first called upon to secure the independence 
of Italy from foreign interference, Piedmont would 
be more than ever capable of fulfilling that mission. 
Enclosed between France and Austria, ever exposed 
on its different frontiers, and possessing forces very 
inferior to its wants, this small power, under the 
hand of the able house which rules it, has suc- 
ceeded in maintaining its own independence for 
centuries, and in holding a position in Europe far 
beyond its actual strength ; having now become much 
more powerful, as possessor of the north of Italy, it 
would prove for the whole peninsula a vast and 
effective shield. There scarcely can be a more 



THE ITALIAN CONFEDERACY. 133 

painful sight than that of a people and government 
who deceive themselves as to their natural capability 
and true destiny. Piedmont is as little adapted to 
the conquest of Italy as it is well suited to its 
defence. France, impelled by the revolution, and 
led by the Emperor Napoleon, failed in the attempt 
to conquer Europe, and to unmake and re-create 
states and dynasties at her pleasure. Piedmont un- 
dertakes an analogous enterprise in Italy. Favour- 
able circumstances and powerful alliances may confer 
momentary success ; but alone it has neither the 
position nor strength requisite to accomplish and 
maintain such designs. 

The system of confederacy in Italy would be as 
propitious to liberty as to national independence. 
At the remembrance of what has passed, and in pre- 
sence of what is now passing in Italy and in Europe, 
the sovereigns of the Italian States, whatever they 
might be, would, willingly, or through necessity, 
rally round the liberal institutions evidently become 
indispensable. And these institutions would be essen- 
tially liberal, for they would respect the sentiments 
and traditions of the different populations. They 
would not begin by imposing on them the abdication 
of a national name, a foreign sovereign, and a fac- 

K 3 



134 THE ITALIAN CONFEDERACY. 

titious unity. They would admit, in the forms and 
guarantees of liberty, those natural variations which 
diversity of situation and history demands. They 
would not require that imperious uniformity and that 
development of military force w T hich constitute the 
almost inevitable burden of great States, and the sad 
necessity of new ones whose doubtful grandeur is 
derived from conquest. 

Finally, the Italian confederacy (and this would 
be its most precious merit) would suppress the ques- 
tion of Koine, that paramount difficulty which Italian 
unity is driven to solve by the spoliation of the papacy, 
and which presses like a fatal judgment on the new 
kingdom of Italy. I admit, in favour of that kingdom, 
the most promising chances ; that France may with- 
draw her troops from Eome ; that Piedmont may 
establish itself there ; that the parliament of Turin 
may remove to that central point; — can it be sup- 
posed that the Koman question would then be settled ? 
It would, on the -contrary, burst forth in all its 
gravity. Nations require material facts, great ex- 
ternal signs, to enable them to comprehend events, 
and to receive from them those leading impressions 
which reveal their full scope. As long as the dispute 
between the papacy and the new kingdom of Italy is 



THE ITALIAN CONFEDERACY. 135 

confined to the possession of certain territories and 
to erudite questions on the organisation of the Church, 
the Catholic populations in France, Spain, and 
Germany, wherever they exist, are not profoundly 
moved or troubled ; they have not enthusiastic ardour 
enough to precipitate themselves in advance of alarms; 
they are told, and they readily believe, that these are 
merely questions of ambition and policy, in which re- 
ligion is not seriously involved. But if they saw the 
seat of the papacy invaded, the Pope a fugitive, the 
Catholic Church shaken in its foundations, and anxi- 
ously demanding its government, capital, right, and 
repose, then the Catholic populations would feel 
the blow, and display their resentment The French 
republic died on the scaffold of Louis XVI. What 
would become of the new kingdom of Italy in presence 
of the Pope dethroned, wandering and begging in the 
midst of the Christian world ? 

We are bound to believe in the natural and spon- 
taneous instincts of great minds; above all, when 
those instincts give warning of the perils attached to 
their own temptations, and of the conditions under 
which their hopes can be realised. At different 
epochs, and in very different situations, M. Eossi and 
I, — a long time before the Eoman embassy was pro- 

K 4 



136 THE ITALIAN CONFEDERACY. 

posed to him, and at the moment when he was 
appointed to it, — in the full liberty of our thoughts, 
and in presence of our mutual responsibility, fre- 
quently conversed together on the future of Italy. 
He had no hope for her independence, except through 
the aid of France, in the midst of a great European 
crisis ; but it was always in the confederative system 
that he saw the guarantee for that hope, and for the 
establishment of liberty. And when the revolution- 
ary crisis of 1848 arrived, when Pius IX. committed 
to the hands of M. Eossi the expectations of Italy 
and the safety of Eome, it was towards the com- 
mercial and military union of the principal Italian 
states that M. Eossi directed his first efforts. He 
was preparing the Italian confederacy when the blow 
of the assassins struck him. 

Let the lives and writings of the great Italian 
patriots, of those towards whom Italy has evinced 
the highest degree of confidence and respect, of 
Count Balbo, the Abbe Grioberti, and M. Manini 
himself*, be referred to ; the same answer will be 

* I find, in a collection entitled Documents and Authentic Frag- 
ments left by Daniel Manini, President of the Republic of Venice, 
translated from the original, with notes, by F. Planat de la Faye 



THE ITALIAN CONFEDERACY. 137 

furnished by all. Through all their illusions and 
schisms, as long as their judgment was free, as long 
as they listened only to their own convictions and the 
interest of their country, the confederacy of Italy, 
either monarchical or republican, was their first 
thought, their most cherished hope, and the object of 
all their efforts. 

By what fatality, and under what influence has 
this great idea been suppressed ? What causes have 
substituted the violent labour of Italian unity for 
the natural desire of confederation ? 

The ambition of Piedmont ! It is thus that the 



(t. i. p. 264), the following paragraph from a letter addressed on 
the 7th of June, 1848, by M. Manini to M. de Cormenin : 

" Under existing circumstances, the unity of Italy is not possible ; 
but it is necessary that Italy should be unified. ; that is to say, that 
there should be a confederacy of Italian States, and for this object, 
that no one of the confederated States should be stronger than the 
others ; for an association cannot exist with security where there is 
too great a disparity of forces. It is also essential that the different 
States, in their composition and extent, should found themselves on 
historical traditions, that populations differing in manners and origin 
should not be joined together, for in that case civil war would suc- 
ceed the war of independence. Finally, it is indispensable that the 
republican form of government should not be interdicted to any par- 
ticular State that might find itself ripe to assume it, and which 
might object to pass through the transitional form of constitutional 
monarchy. 



13S THE ITALIAN CONFEDERACY. 

conscience of Europe answers the question. I have 
no desire to dispute the reply. Nevertheless, I do 

not think that Piedmontese ambition is the only or 
even the leading cause of this sudden transfer of the 
feelings and efforts of the Italians. In great poli- 
tical dramas, and especially at their opening, the 
general ideas and passions of peoples or parties play 
a superior part to that of the interests and egotistical 
passions of the actors. The republican party in Italy 
were the first patrons and ardent propagators of 
Italian unity. It was through the incessant action 
of M. Mazzmi and his adherents that this idea ex- 
pounded itself and obtained credit. By degrees 
people, became accustomed to see in it the only 
means of expelling the foreigner and of conquering 
the independence of Italy. The path they had been 
compelled to follow, and the nature of the arms they 
had employed when engaging in the struggle, of 
necessity conducted to this result. It was by means 
of secret association and conspiracy that the Austrian 
rule was attacked and undermined. To render con- 
spiracy successful, it was reduced to seek in all 
the Italian States and governments the hearts and 
hands ready for its service : thus the first Italian 
army of independence recruited itself, and in the 



THE ITALIAN CONFEDERACY. 139 

name of Italian unity that recruiting was accom- 
plished. Setting aside this necessity of position, 
minds are disposed in the present age to receive with 
favour the idea of great national unities, whether re- 
publican or imperial ; this idea gratifies both ambi- 
tion and vanity. Nation or individual, no one wishes 
to be insignificant ; all persuade themselves that they 
may become great ; and now-a-days greatness is es- 
timated by the numbers counted and the space occu- 
pied ; a coarse and subversive materialism, which, if 
it could definitively prevail, would, be as fatal to the 
liberty as to the repose of human society. It is 
neither number nor space, but the quality of men 
and ideas which constitutes their greatness ; history 
teems with small illustrious States and with great 
obscure nations. I trust that this childish propensity 
for territorial and nominal extent of country may 
never become the predominating and permanent pas- 
sion of men ; but it is certain that to-day, under the 
influence of the imposing scenes which Europe has 
contemplated, and the absorbing temptations they 
have excited, the tendency to vast political unities is 
powerful, and readily seduces the heads of nations 
and the nations themselves. The ambition of Pied- 
mont has fostered this tendency as it has encouraged 



140 THE ITALIAN CONFEDERACY. 

republican conspiracy ; it has given its hand to the 
two great levers of the day — the spirit of revolution 
and the spirit of conquest ; and it is thus that unity, 
a violent idea, and one much less liberal in reality 
than in appearance, has assumed in Italy the place of 
federation, a far more natural and less onerous 
guarantee for the national liberty and independence 
of the peninsula. 



141 



CHAP. XXII. 



FRANCE IN ITALY. 



I shall not go back beyond the peace of Villafranca, 
I shall not inquire whether the war waged against 
Austria in Italy for the benefit of Piedmont was 
good policy on the part of France. The point is still 
in debate whether Louis XVI. was right in supporting 
by force of arms the British colonies of America in 
their lawful insurrection against England. These 
are questions so complicated, that even after the 
events they remain doubtful and obscure. Unfore- 
seen facts ever intrude themselves to counteract the 
resolutions and combinations which the most skilful 
politicians have prepared and adopted. The defini- 
tive merit of these combinations does not depend 
solely on their immediate success, but also on the 
conduct pursued by their originators after that suc- 
cess, and in proportion as the long consequences of 
the struggle develop themselves. If the French 



142 FEAXCE Di ITALY. 

revolution had not broke out shortly after the Ameri- 
can war, or if Louis XVI., instead of being a weak 
and virtuous martyr, had been a great monarch, 
capable of directing a great national movement in 
France, as America had supported one in opposition to 
England, the wisdom of that American war and armed 
intervention in aid of a people against their govern- 
ment, would never have been disputed. We never 
calculate beforehand all possible contingencies, we 
never hold in our hands all the threads of those 
lofty enterprises mingled with good and evil, with 
justice and violence ; and even with the most natural 
and best concerted, fortune takes a large share, and 
often proves how little human prescience and power 
avail in the task when they have such problems to 
solve and such burdens to endure, • 

It has been said that France is the only nation 
that makes war for an idea. Heaven forbid that I 
should forget the noble disposition of my country to 
adopt that course for a great conception, or a gener- 
ous design, and to place public force boldly at the 
service of public feeling ! Nation or individual, "nian 
does not live by bread alone : " the wants of the mind 
have as much claim to be satisfied as those of the 
body, and moral sentiments contribute much more to 



FEAXCE Ds T ITALY. 143 

the greatness of States than political calculations. 
But the noblest propensities require restraint ; ideas 
as well as interest must be founded on reason, and 
war is not the natural mode of demonstrating the 
legitimacy of ideas. I trust that the progress of 
civilization an liberty may not freeze the heart of 
France ; but I hope also that she will learn more and 
more to form a just estimate of her instincts before 
obeying them, and to consider maturely, in her reso- 
lutions, all the rights and interests involved in the 
questions to be solved and the enterprises under- 
taken. 

After ihe success of the campaign in Italy, the 
peace of Villafranca was a bold and judicious act, 
whichhowever involved the serious objection of leaving 
incomplete the declared object of the war — the 
expulsion of Austrian rule ; but which, after an im- 
mense advance towards this end, restored the policy 
of France in Italy to its lawful independence and 
natural maxims. "What are those maxims ? What 
is the natural and national policy of France towards 
Italy? This is the question that concerns us, and 
the only one I wish to approach. 

In every State judiciously governed, foreign policy 
depends essentially on internal policy. It is accord- 



144 FRANCE IN ITALY. 

ing to the situation and disposition of the country at 
home that its conduct abroad should be regulated. 
Diplomacy, whether peaceful or warlike, ought to be 
carried on under the image of the nation itself, for 
its service and according to its bent. 

The following are, to-day, in their essential and 
general features, the internal state and dispositions 
of France. 

France is liberal and not revolutionary. Many 
revolutionary excitements are still active in her 
bosom ; many revolutionary prejudices and practices 
are still rife amongst us, even where the revolutionary 
spirit is no longer in a state of ferment. But in her 
free thought and will, France now rejects revolution. 
No great national interest, no powerful public senti- 
ment inclines her in that direction; she may be 
driven into it by surprise, but as soon as she dis- 
covers the danger she resists it with ardour, and 
satisfied, on the whole, with her social state, she 
returns, at any cost, towards order and the system 
capable of securing it. It has been said elsewhere, 
that we must accept revolution to attain liberty; 
France sacrifices liberty to escape from revolution. 

France no more aspires to conquests than to new 
revolutions ; filled with reminiscences of her glory, 



FRANCE IN ITALY. 145 

she gratifies herself by reanimating them, and in 
finding herself ever strong and brilliant in war ; but 
she also feels that she no longer requires war for her 
independence and greatness ; at times, the emotions 
of that arena attract and charm her ; but she has no 
wish to continue in it ; in the main, she is pacific ; 
and by a just instinct of her great moral and material 
interests she hurries back to peace when she fears to 
lose it for a lengthened period, as she also returns to 
order when she sees it seriously compromised. 

France is at the same time Catholic and profoundly 

attached to religious liberty; faith and doubt, zeal 

and indifference, reciprocally claim this privilege; 

at one time faith, at another indifference ; to-day 

Christians, to-morrow unbelievers, demand it; but 

liberty is equally necessary to all, and none would 

suffer it to be taken from them or permanently 

withheld. We have still, in the matter of religious 

liberty, much progress to make; in our laws and 

habits it is much less complete and assured than 

we like to acknowledge ; real and practical liberty, 

in worship and conscience, is more general and better 

secured in certain other Christian countries than in 

ours. In religion as in policy, in spiritual as in civil 

life, the possession of equality consoles us for what 



146 FKAJS T CE m ITALY. 

is incomplete and precarious in liberty. Because 
religious creeds are not taken into consideration in 
the exercise of public rights, because unbelievers as 
well as Christians, Protestants and Jews, in common 
with Catholics, enter freely into all careers and attain 
all the employments of the State, we too easily forget 
that religious liberty is sometimes wanting to one 
sect and sometimes to another, either fettered by 
laws, or ill supported and even compromised by 
manners and habits. But these are the difficulties 
and natural delays of the great transformation de- 
creed amongst us in the relations of civil and 
religious society, of the Church and the State. In 
the midst of all the obstacles it encounters and the 
efforts it demands, this transformation accomplishes 
and establishes itself from day to day ; while ceasing 
to be exclusive and predominant, the old faith has 
not perished. France remains essentially Catholic, 
but in presence of and under the law, as also with 
the benefits of liberty. 

Such has France become internally, and for her 
own advantage. Such ought she to show and conduct 
herself externally in her relations with foreign states, 
especially with the Italians, of all her neighbours 
those whose destinies are to-day the most in question, 



FRANCE IN ITALY. 147 

and over whom she is naturally called upon to exercise 
the greatest influence. France, liberal but not re- 
volutionary, owes her favour to the efforts of Italy 
for independence and liberty, but not to Italian 
revolutions. France, pacific and divested of all 
aggressive views, requires that no foreign power 
shall command in Italy; but not that one of the 
Italian States should invade and absorb the rest. 
France, at the same time catholic and liberal, ought 
to protect religious liberty in Italy, but on condition 
that the Catholic Church shall also be free, and 
preserve its independence, constitution, and rights. 
Why assist another to violate the law of nations 
in Italy while professing to respect it throughout 
Europe? Why favour the conquests of another 
power when seeking none on her own account? 
Why erect a great power by her side without be- 
coming greater herself? I do not think that, even 
for Italy, this policy can be sound ; but beyond all 
doubt it is not the natural and national policy of 
France towards that country ; it is inconsistent and 
profitless ; equally repugnant to French interests and 
principles. 

I have no desire to scrutinize and bring to light 
what I consider important errors on the part of the 

L 2 



148 FRANCE IX ITALY. 

government of my own country; still less does it 
please me to trace the motives for those errors in 
sentiments and intentions, which no power that en- 
tertains self-respect ought to avow. I would rather 
confine myself to the error alone, to those false views 
and vain apprehensions which often, in the conduct 
of governments, produce more important effects than 
evil designs. 

The peace of Villafranca restored the policy of 
France in Italy to its independence and natural 
maxims ; but it failed to solve all the questions or to 
suppress all the passions now actively fermenting 
amongst the Italians. It left erect and in full excite- 
ment the revolutionists, the advocates for unity, the 
Sicilian, Neapolitan, and Eoman malcontents, and 
above all, the ambition of Piedmont, adroit in foster- 
ing all these elements of discord, and in making 
them the instruments of her own views. How are 
they to be restrained ? How prevent the new dis- 
orders so ostentatiously presenting and announcing 
themselves? How ensure to Italy that policy of 
peace and national rights so recently proclaimed ? 

There was, it is said, but one method of attaining 
that end; to restrain the Italians, force should have 
been used, the same force by which they had just 



FRANCE IN ITALY. 149 

been emancipated ; the armed intervention of France 
could alone maintain, in their states, the Pope, the 
King of Naples, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and 
check or govern revolutions. Such a course was 
impracticable ; armed intervention would have been 
illegal ; the independence of peoples, universal suffrage 
permitted it not. In this dilemma, the principle 
of non-intervention, absolute and general, was laid 
down ; and under the shelter of this principle, Italian 
revolution and Piedmontese ambition have pursued 
their unfettered course. 

This was a line of policy too much restricted, and its 
authors have not a sufficiently expansive idea of the 
power possessed by those who have the honour of 
governing France. No one can be more opposed than 
I am to armed intervention in the internal affairs of 
States ; every nation has a right to regulate its own 
destinies, and non-intervention is a most just and 
wholesome principle, a derogation from which can 
only be justified by an urgent national interest. But 
armed intervention is not the only means of action at 
the disposal of foreign policy ; by the side of force, a 
great nation possesses influence; and influence, to 
those who know how to use it, is scarcely less effec- 
tive than force. At the present moment we have a 

L 3 



150 FRANCE IN ITALY. 

brilliant example of this before our eyes : Did Eng- 
land send armies to Italy? Did she gain battles 
there ? Physically she has done nothing ; neverthe- 
less she weighs heavily in Italian affairs ; by her 
attitude alone, by her language, she exercises a 
powerful influence over parties and events. By the 
same means France could, and ought to become 
more important still; and the evidences of power she 
has lately exhibited in that theatre are doubtless 
enough to secure her effectual agency without the 
necessity of employing her armies. 

In our days, above all others, and under our system 
of European publicity, the policy of influence has 
many chances of success ; its means of action are 
more varied, and infinitely better graduated than 
those of force. According as it wishes to promote or 
check, it can proceed, at first by friendly advice, 
then by extending or contracting diplomatic rela- 
tions, and finally by those indirect aids or im- 
pediments which do not amount to the employment 
of force, but which open it in perspective, and as if 
suspended over the cause it is intended to assist or 
shackle. We acted thus from 1833 to 1838, in our 
relations with Spain ; we abstained from all armed 
intervention in her domestic commotions ; but we 



FRANCE IN ITALY. 151 

openly acknowledged and supported by every means 
of influence I have here alluded to, the constitutional 
monarchy founded after the death of Ferdinand 
VII. ; and that policy, while fully respecting the 
laws of nations, was not deficient in efficacy and 
success. 

I grant that it has exalted and difficult conditions ; 
it does not admit in the line of conduct proposed to 
be followed, and in the limits within which it is to 
be confined, vague ideas and unsettled resolutions, 
for uncertainty and vacillation kill influence. To 
be effectually exercised, influence must act upon 
defined notions and fixed principles. And these 
notions and principles require to be publicly mani- 
fested and ready to sustain, under any possible 
contingencies, public discussion and its trials ; for 
publicity is an indispensable weapon of political 
influence. It is by publicity that it operates upon 
minds, and renders itself comprehensible and ac- 
ceptable, either to the country over which it is exer- 
cised, or to the European populations, the spectators 
and judges of passing events. To these conditions 
for success, the policy of influence may add another, 
— perseverance, and patience in perseverance. By a 
judicious use of right and time, a resort to force may 

L 4 



152 FRANCE IX ITALY. 

be dispensed with, but such a result is well worthy 
of being attained on such terms ; and this policy is 
pre-eminently suited to free peoples and governments; 
for if it imposes on them a difficult task, it relieves 
them from embarrassments and dangers for more 
serious than the accompanying difficulties. 

Let it not then be said that armed intervention 
alone could have modified the course of events in 
Italy, and that it was necessary to declare war 
against the independence of States to secure respect 
for the law of nations. This is to misunderstand 
the character of these events, the resources of policy, 
and the authority of France. What has taken place 
in Italy since the peace of Villafranca has not been 
so spontaneous and uncontested that the material 
power of France was the only means of preventing 
it ; and if French influence had been decidedly 
employed clearly and consistently, so that no one 
could have mistaken it, I do not hesitate to affirm 
that it would have amply sufficed, without armed 
intervention, to establish, beyond the Alps, the na- 
tional policy of France and the rights of nations. 



153 



CHAP. XXIII. 

THE FUTURE OF EUROPE. 

I should feel surprised if, amongst clear-sighted 
spectators of the actual position of Europe, I encoun- 
tered one who was not impressed with profound 
anxiety. 

It is not that people are either worse or more 
miserable to-day than they were formerly ; never, on 
the contrary, were they in a better condition ; never 
were manners more equable and gentle ; never was 
there in governments more real good feeling or 
prudent care for the different populations, or amongst 
the people a better disposition. Our generations 
have had their share, and no trifling one, in the 
miseries inherent to humanity ; but what we call the 
progress of civilization is not a falsity ; everywhere, 
in all degrees of social order, in all the relations and 
affairs of life, men acknowledge and feel its salutary 
effects. 



154 THE FUTURE OF EUROPE. 

Nevertheless European society is seriously dis- 
turbed ; institutions and creeds, laws and influences, 
public and private relations, all things are in question. 
Almost everywhere, the old edifice falls or totters, 
and we see not upon what solid foundation the new one 
is to be erected. In all quarters, confusion, incohe- 
rence, and uncertainty occupy men's minds, and either 
pass, or threaten to pass, into facts ; governments 
and peoples are at once agitated and fatigued ; the 
present inspires no security, the future offers no 
light ; and notwithstanding the indisputable progress 
of intelligence and social condition we live in darkness 
and upon ruins. 

Our age has been, and is still, an epoch of inor- 
dinate hopes and immense miscalculations. Since 
1789, three generations have already passed over, 
promising to themselves and to human society in 
general, a sum of liberty, prosperity, ease and hap- 
piness in life, infinitely superior to what man has 
hitherto possessed. And not alone have speculative 
minds, philosophers and philanthropists anticipated 
this flattering future ; these hopes have been univer- 
sally expanded ; they have pervaded all classes, the 
most destitute and obscure as well as the most ex- 



THE FUTUKE OF EUROPE. 155 

alted ; amongst rich and poor, with the learned and 
illiterate, with the perverted and upright, spirits 
have become excited, hearts have beat high, ima- 
ginations have revelled in the most brilliant perspec- 
tives. It is not a single Christopher Columbus, but 
many millions of men who aspire to conquer a new 
world. 

Although success has been eminent upon many 
points, it is yet far from responding to desire and 
expectation. The difficulties were found to be 
more obstinate, the road longer, more laborious, 
more dangerous, and the new world less beautiful 
and easy of universal access than was expected. 
Doubt replaced confidence, and discouragement sup- 
planted ardour. The zealots for liberty in parti- 
cular became weary of sustaining such a prolonged 
struggle, and of persevering in so many efforts 
for such incomplete and disputed results. Political 
theories and unbounded hopes began to be mistrusted. 
People endeavoured to pause and settle themselves 
at the point attained ; the old maxims and those of 
the new interests which appeared satisfied were called 
upon to reconstruct together the society introduced 
in place of that destroyed by the spirit of innovation. 



156 THE FUTUKE OF EUKOPE. 

Eeaction and revolution coalesced and reciprocally 
aided each other. The rule of a new absolute power 
replaced the search after liberty. 

But here also, success, brilliant at first, was short, 
and followed by startling errors. Although exercised 
with genius and glory, the new absolutism was neither 
able to endure, nor to found a system which satisfied 
society ; it lost itself in the intoxication and abuse of 
its own strength, a fatal consequence of its nature. 
In turn, its enthusiasts were beguiled in their confi- 
dence, the spirit of liberty reappeared on the ruins of 
the fallen power ; and France, after this double ex- 
perience, found herself face to face with the terrible 
problem of our age ; — what is the new political edi- 
fice which will suit the new state of society, and how 
is it to be constructed so as to be permanent ? 

And it is not only in France, but in Europe, in the 
whole world, that these two mistakes, liberal and 
absolutist, have displayed themselves. In Austria, 
the clever Prince de Metternich saw absolute here- 
ditary power perish in his hands. In Eussia, the 
Emperor Nicholas had scarcely ceased to live, when 
his son, Alexander II., in his old States at least, 
resigned himself to the spirit of innovation and 
progress. Spain, that theatre of the cruel labours 



THE FUTUKE OF EUROPE. 157 

of Philip II. in the cause of despotism, entered, 
when defending her independence, into the paths of 
liberty, and moves on in them, for nearly thirty 
years, with persevering although uncertain steps. 
Italy has recently rushed into them. And while in 
those countries where it had reigned with the 
greatest strength, the system of absolute power under- 
went all these checks, the liberal system has encoun- 
tered new ones where to all appearance it was most 
firmly established. In France the constitutional mo- 
narchy was suddenly overthrown, and in the United 
States of America, the republic, that special mark 
for radical admiration and ambition, violently dis- 
organises itself and plunges into the darkness of the 
future. 

After so many alternating experiences and mistakes, 
the present moment ought to be propitious for a final 
understanding and settlement of the political system 
to which all modern society aspires. Liberals and 
absolutists, revolutionists and conservatives, govern- 
ments and peoples, have all proved the vanity of 
their extreme pretensions and have hurried on to the 
utmost limits of their power. Nor can it be said 
that these great lessons have produced no effect; the 
spirit of equity, and a conviction of what, in matters 



158 THE FUTURE OF EUROPE. 

of political organization, is now either impossible or 
necessary, have made signal progress throughout all 
Europe; the classes hitherto exclusively dominant, 
no longer dispute the common rights of humanity, 
and show themselves everywhere disposed or resigned 
to accept the system of competition open to all 
degrees of merit. The middle classes have learned to 
mistrust social utopianisms, and to distinguish what 
conditions of public- order are indispensable to the 
good internal order of families and to the prosperity 
of labour. Governments, w T ith more or less intelli- 
gence and favour, have entered or are entering into the 
track of reform, and a policy regulated entirely by 
the general interests of nations and the tendencies of 
European civilization. In spiritual order, the anta- 
gonism between old faiths and new ideas becomes 
weaker ; unbelief is no longer the passion of minds 
and the style of manners ; the philosophy which is 
not materialistic wishes to be religious ; there are 
many serious and sincere returns towards Christian 
faith and life ; even when faith is wanting, the senti- 
ment of public interest and of the rights of individual 
conscience maintains respect. In the higher and 
middling social regions, while liberty is practised and 
developed, the essential principles of moral and 



THE FUTURE OF EUKOPE. 159 

political order resume their rank and a portion of 
their empire. 

But while the storm disperses on these points of 
the horizon, it removes and increases elsewhere. 
The false ideas, the bad passions, the exaggerated 
hopes which have produced our faults and miscalcu- 
lations, descend, expand themselves, and acquire added 
venom when they reach the popular masses, and 
excite amongst them blind and ardent ambitions no 
longer restrained either by religious faith, or by the 
discipline of old habits more and more attacked, 
shaken and uprooted. We cannot calculate the 
intensity, the rapidity with which the seeds of 
anarchy propagate and develop themselves amongst 
the innumerable anonymous crowds who have to 
endure through so many labours and privations the 
burden of life. It is always amongst these that the 
evil of the time ferments ; and it encounters not, in 
the social regions, where the experience of revolutions 
has infused its light, the inclinations, shall I say the 
virtues, which alone can repress or cure them. Doubt 
cannot conquer fanaticism, neither can weakness 
struggle effectively with exuberant passion. At 
present, the classes naturally called to direct society, 
abandon themselves to doubt, to weakness, to an in- 



160 THE FUTURE OF EUROPE. 

telligent and restrained, but worn out and frivolous 
egotism. To be equal to this task requires more self- 
confidence, a more distinct reliance on individual 
thoughts and rights : inasmuch as harsh, immoveable 
and obstinate policy is incapable to-day of governing 
peoples, so does authority equally require that concert, 
between maxims and acts, that vigour in resolutions 
and language, and that independence and sympathy 
which command, at once, confidence and respect. 

This is what, in our days, is too often wanting to 
the social influences and political powers placed at 
the head of States, and herein especially lies 
the peril of the European future. The force of evil 
in this world is less formidable than the weakness of 
good, and if just ideas displayed themselves boldly, 
false principles would find a more restricted field of 
action. And it is not alone in the internal govern- 
ment of states that this hesitation, this inconsis- 
tency, this weakness on the part of the natural 
guardians of order, prevail ; the mischief has pene- 
trated to external policy ; it enervates and corrupts 
the language and conduct of the great European 
governments in presence of the commotions which 
break out in Europe. Some — Eussia and Prussia, 
for instance — remain surprised and as if stupefied, 



THE FUTURE OF EUROPE. 161 

neither knowing nor daring how to distinguish in 
such events, what is just or unjust, natural or 
factitious, rational or impracticable, and then re- 
nounce judgment and action as if they were com- 
pelled to wait for and submit to the decrees of 
fatality. Others, — and especially England, — either 
from party influence, or from frivolous views of inte- 
rest, give to foreign revolutions an indistinct adhesion, 
and accept indiscriminately their extravagances and 
their reforms, their usurpations and attacks against 
the law of nations, in common with their most 
legitimate claims and enterprises. Called on to 
declare themselves and to exercise their influence in 
the confused conflicts between good and evil, truth 
and falsehood, progress and chimeras, nearly all the 
leading European States abdicate their natural and 
lofty mission; some acknowledge their impotence, 
others sink into accomplices. 

Nothing, I am aware, is so common as self-delu- 
sion as to the consequences of a particular situation, 
when they do not appear to be material or immi- 
nent; rulers and ruled live on the present, and 
voluntarily close their eyes to the future when it 
threatens to reveal their faults and disturb their 
repose. Nevertheless, foresight is one of the most 

H 



162 THE FUTURE OF EUROPE. 

essential conditions, not only of security but of 
power ; and those only can influence the destiny of 
States who occupy themselves with the morrow. 
It is thus, if I am not mistaken, that the question 
of the future presents itself at present with regard 
to Europe. 

Peoples and governments are placed under an im- 
perious alternative ; they are bound to reconcile the 
new ideas and necessities which disturb them with 
the eternal principles of order and justice, or they 
must enter upon an era of decline. If we do not 
succeed in founding under different forms, according 
to places and circumstances, a liberal system capable 
of harmony and permanence, we must submit inde- 
finitely to those varieties of revolution and reaction, 
of anarchy and despotism which may prolong them- 
selves even with brilliancy, but which gradually and 
certainly deteriorate, demoralize, and subvert all 
nations. We cannot stop, we cannot retrace the 
course of ages ; we cannot support the old system, 
which totters in every direction ; we cannot re-esta- 
blish it on its own ruins. And if, on the other hand, 
we abandon ourselves to the revolutionary current, 
if, in endeavouring to obtain acknowledgment and 
triumph for the new rights developed by time, we 



THE FUTUKE OF EUEOPE. 163 

forget and violate all the old rights which time has 
consecrated, if we persuade ourselves that to take 
possession of the new world we must utterly over- 
turn the old, we shall not be more successful in 
raising the new edifice on solid foundations than in 
reinstating that which had fallen. When great con- 
tests arise in the bosom of human societies, when 
powerful parties wage bitter strife, none of them are 
entirely in the right ; truth and justice do not reside 
in one camp alone. A conqueror is necessary to 
finish the struggle ; but if the conqueror intends to 
seize everything and to establish his empire on 
oblivion of the rights of the conquered, he will not 
become a legitimate or permanent master, and peace 
will fail to follow war. In our days, after all the 
experience we have had, and all the trials we have 
endured, the victories which establish peace are ob- 
tained at a higher price ; without as well within, in 
the foreign relations of States, as in the internal life 
of the people, they must respect relative rights, con- 
stitutional and national, and must acknowledge the 
liberty of all, of the vanquished as well as of the 
victors. 

Six years ago, in 1855, when witnessing the dis- 
tress and despondency of the greater portion of my 

M 2 



164 THE FUTURE OF EUROPE. 

friends, I found it necessary to say why I did not 

participate in their convictions, and I wrote a few 
pages, which I take the liberty of reproducing here, 
for although they apply directly to France, and it 
was France alone I had in view, they express ideas 
and sentiments, conformable, as I think, with the 
general state of Europe, and the truth of which is 
still more striking now than it was at that earlier 
period. The Christian Church was not then in 
question; laical society and France alone were in- 
volved. The tempest has expanded itself ; the 
Church as well as the State, Europe in common 
with France is exposed to its effects ; and if Italy 
is at this moment its principal theatre, France must 
answer for the events in which in Italy to-day. as in 
Europe for three quarters of a century, she has been 
the most prominent actor. 



OUR ERROES AND OUR HOPES. 

(March 31st 18-5-5.) 

u I encounter two classes of persons whose dis- 
positions sadden and disturb me; the first attach 



OUE ERRORS AND OUR HOPES. 165 

themselves obstinately and under any possible contin- 
gencies to what they have once believed and wished ; 
the second readily abandon cherished prepossessions, 
with or without regret, when the evil time comes. 
The first learn nothing, the second forget everything. 
On the one part they are incurably blind, on the other, 
timidly egotistical or despondingly doubtful. These 
are two methods of losing good causes ; for to gain 
them requires conviction and clear judgment, the vivid 
light of experience and the enduring enthusiasm of 
faith. Let us enlighten ourselves while w T e persevere; 
on this double condition alone, Grod imparts strength 
and permits success. 

"We have committed many errors. I wish to 
state, according to my own idea, what they have 
taught us, and what they leave us a right to expect. 

"In 1789, there was a general confidence that man 
is naturally virtuous, desirous of good, and almost 
always disposed to do good, if, instead of leaving him 
free, the vices of social institutions and the abuses 
of power were not incessantly interfering to irritate, 
bewilder, or corrupt him. Philosophers asserted 
this ; the public believed it. I once heard a man of 
intelligence, a fervent and sincere disciple of that 
school, affirm seriously that the forest-keepers 

21 3 



166 OUR ERRORS AND OUR HOPES. 

were the principal causes of rural crimes. The of- 
fences as well as the misfortunes of subjects were 
laid to the charge of government, and it was no 
longer the individual man, but general society which 
had to answer for all. 

" A confidence overflowing with fascination for self- 
love and for the heart. Not only does man thus 
obtain relief from a heavy burden, but nothing then 
interfering to hinder him from being pleased with 
himself and with his fellow-creatures, he can sur- 
render himself up to the indulgences of sympathy 
and the pleasures of egotism, to benevolence and 
pride.. All that was said, written, or done in 1789 
attests the simultaneous empire of these two senti- 
ments, so opposite in their nature ; man had faith in 
humanity as in himself; he was act the same time 
presumptuous and full of kindness, impressed with 
his own merit and generously sensible to the merit 
of others. 

"While believing himself, in 1789, essentially good, 
man also fancied himself powerful, almost omni- 
potent. With the sentiment of his inherent malig- 
nity, the conviction of his weakness also disappeared. 
If evil is only an accident, produced by external 
causes, and not an inherent fact, belonging to the 



OUE EKROHS AND OUK HOPES. 167 

nature of man, it belongs to man to avoid or repair 
it. If the miseries of the human condition and even 
human vices are only the result of bad institutions 
and of the abuse of force, why should not man be able 
to abolish them ? Wisdom can cure the consequences 
of error, science those of ignorance, just and well- 
organised force those of selfish and brutal power. 
Man did not create evil, but it rests with him to 
repair and reform it, to reconstruct human society. 
Chaos is before him ; it is his privilege, as he has 
the means, to instil into it light and order. Impressed 
with boundless ambition as with unlimited esteem 
for humanity, our fathers in 1789 believed that they 
sought nothing but good, and that they had the power 
of effecting all the good they sought. 

" They felt, moreover, for their own age, an ad- 
miration full of pleasure and hope. It was an epoch 
of new lights, rapid progress, and expanded civiliza- 
tion. Manners were softened, minds developed, ideas 
propagated visibly and generally, life became for all 
easy and animated ; throughout society there was a 
lively and fertile excitement, a kind of eager and 
universal blooming, as occurs in nature at the 
breath of spring. What a powerful seduction was 
there in the triple faith of believing that man was 

M 4 



168 OUR ERRORS AND OUR HOPES. 

good and powerful, and had reached the day for 
displaying his goodness and power for the general 
advantage ! 

a A seduction replete with error and danger ! 
Error and danger which, since 1789, experience, 
from year to year, places in clearer light ! 

" The truth, as regards man's nature, is in the 
Christian faith; it is in man himself that evil re- 
sides ; he is inclined to evil. I do not wish here 
to enter upon theology, but I use these terms without 
hesitation, as the most precise and clear ; the dogma 
of original sin is the religious expression and appli- 
cation of a natural fact, the innate propensity of man 
to disobedience and license. I hold this fact as 
evident to the eyes of every one who examines him- 
self with sincerity. To surmount it, man requires 
two restraining powers ; an internal check, faith in 
Grod and in his moral laws ; an external one, human 
laws, and an authority capable of making them re- 
spected. Where one of these checks is wanting, the 
other is insufficient; the force of human laws alone 
is powerless to regulate and bridle men in whom the 
moral law is deficient ; and to preserve its empire 
over men, the moral law requires the aid of human 
laws. Given up entirely to its own bias, whether 



OUR ERRORS AND OUR HOPES. 169 

internally or externally, the human heart forgets and 
loses itself. 

"Why is it not permitted to us to communi- 
cate beyond the grave, with our fathers, to hear 
their voices, and receive their counsels ! What 
would they not tell us of their error as to the 
natural goodness of man, and of their grief when a 
sinister conviction presented itself to their eyes ! It 
is a bitter mistake to dream of the happiness of 
humanity, and to wake and find it plunged in tears 
and blood : but to dream of its virtue, its innocence, 
and to fall suddenly into its vicious and unbridled 
passions, is a more heart-rending error still. The 
spectacle of human wretchedness wounds the soul ; 
that of man's vices and crimes utterly prostrates it. 
Moral evil is of all evils the most hideous to con- 
template. Our fathers in 1789 were condemned to 
pass from perspectives of paradise to scenes of hell. 
May Grod preserve us from forgetting them ! 

" They lost at the same time their confidence in 
the omnipotence of man, and in his virtue. They 
believed themselves masters of all things, able to 
reform and reconstruct society according to their 
ideas and wishes, competent to dispose of social facts, 
as of any inert matter that they might reject or 



170 OUK ERRORS AST) OUR HOPE?. 

mould at will. Everywhere they encountered resist- 
ance, often blind and always vehement. They were 
taught that old facts, even when worn out through 
time and called to a necessary regeneration, do not 
suffer themselves to be handled at the pleasure of 
new convictions. These facts, treated with so much 
contempt, institutions, creeds, manners, royalty, 
nobility, clergy, parliaments, civil or religious cor- 
porations, all the old French society, did not pas- 
sively consent to perish. To triumph over it no 
means or excesses were omitted ; fire and sword were 
employed against it ; and when the work of fire and 
sword was accomplished, the conquerors found them- 
selves unexpectedly powerless ; they were unable to 
realise the plans in the name of which they had 
overthrown the old building: to construct the new 
one, they were obliged to use the stones they had 
broken, to retread the paths they had filled with 
ruins; — royalty, the court, the nobility, the clergy, 
the old maxims and forms, all reappeared ; the 
young elements of society hastened to clothe them- 
selves in the old costumes, to dwell under the old 
shelters. Even in its greatest days the power of 
man moves within narrow limits ; it bows to the 
empire of the laws it disavows, of the facts it over- 



OUR ERRORS AXD OUR HOPES. 171 

throws, of the traditions it repudiates. It has two 
masters, Grod and time; when it pretends to shake 
off their yoke or to dispense with their support, it 
speedily falls again, encountering nothing in its 
flight but emptiness, and crushed under its own 
weight. 

" As in regard to the natural goodness and power 
of man, so did our fathers deceive themselves in their 
estimate of their own time, of its merits, and the 
value of its progress — an error natural and common 
to all ages. What age does not love and admire it- 
self ? but the eighteenth century was destined to be 
carried, and suffered itself to be carried, beyond all 
others, in that road. "What advancement can exceed 
that, in the eyes of enlightened men, which makes 
mind the first of social influences ? This was the 
true feature of the eighteenth century; never did 
purely intellectual merit afford so much enjoyment 
to its possessors ; gratifications at once of justice and 
of pride. They celebrated the epoch which gave them 
empire. The eighteenth century was, moreover, an 
aggressive epoch, an era of criticism and attack upon 
prevailing facts and established powers ; an easy 
superiority which willingly arrogates to itself all 
others. Considered in a point of view purely philo- 



172 OUR ERRORS AXD OUR HOPES. 

sophical, and in their connection with the essence of 
things, the ideas of that age, whether in regard to 
man or society, were not always elevated or profound; 
others have gone further in knowledge of human 
nature and of the conditions of social order. But in 
a critical sense, and in its struggle with the errors 
and vices of declining powers and systems, the eigh- 
teenth century obtained a ready victory ; and while, 
in the infatuation of triumph, it plunged men into 
the intoxication of hope, it lavished on them magni- 
ficent and undefined promises, with prospects of a 
future equally happy and glorious, and which they 
would owe to themselves alone. It was an age, not 
only of impassioned sympathy with, but of idolatrous 
adulation of human nature, and in this point espe- 
cially it ceased to be Christian. 

"Of all idolatries none so rapidly reveals and 
decries itself as that which has man for its object. 
The idol was broken before the eighteenth century 
disappeared. 

"I pass from 1789 to 1830, and from the mistakes 
of our fathers to those of our own time and of our- 
selves. 

"The year 1830 bore no resemblance to 1789. 
There was no grand and enthusiastic impulse of the 



OUR ERRORS AXD OUR HOPES. 173 

country towards an unknown future: no undefined 
pretensions and hopes. The movement was limited, 
not directed against the social state, but purely 
political. Amongst the men who co-operated in it, 
there were different desires and efforts : some sought 
only to develop by lawful means the constitutional 
system already established ; others had an ill feeling 
towards the elder branch of the house of Bourbon, 
from remembrance of the disasters of 1814, or could 
not believe that under its reign new interests would 
be safe, or the constitutional system exercised in 
full vigour. Behind these latter marched the repub- 
lican party and the anarchical factions, ardent and 
formidable, but still in the shade, and compelled to 
remain there, doubting their own strength and re- 
strained by a consciousness of the terror they in- 
spired. The national feeling, although excited and 
prepared for a revolution, went not beyond a change 
of dynasty and the extension of popular rights. 
Those who would have preferred stopping short of 
this point reckoned at least that it would not be 
exceeded. Those who were unwilling to go so far, 
promised themselves and their supporters that they 
would pause there. Those who aspired to go beyond, 
did not consider themselves yet in a position to sue- 



174 OUR ERRORS AXD OUR HOPES. 

ceed, and were contented to wait while ever pushing 
on in advance. 

f The result agreed with this state of parties and 
spirits. In the bosom of a formidable excitement, 
and despite the confusion of its first steps, the young 
monarchy established and developed itself according 
to the idea of its foundation. Thus was, during 
eighteen years, under the flag of new France, the 
constitutional system sincerely accepted and liberally 
practised. The government of July has had to sus- 
tain many reproaches ; one, at least, must be spared ; 
it did what rational and responsible men demanded 
from it, and what it had promised ; it was true to its 
mission and its end; it lived and fell within the 
circle of the Charter to which it had sworn. 

" Why did it fall ? 

u Through its own faults, say its adversaries ; 
through the faults of the king who governed too 
much, and of the ministers who governed badly. 
To those who hold this language I have at present 
nothing to say. I have no desire now to discuss the 
conduct of any one, either in government or oppo- 
sition. But the more I reflect on the subject, the 
more I feel astonished that we should thus pause on 
the surface of things, and confine ourselves within 



OUR ERRORS AND OUR HOPES. 175 

the narrow circle of political actors, when it is so 
easy, by a loftier and more extended view, to ascer- 
tain the true causes of our miscalculations and re- 
verses. 

" There are errors which I do not specially impute 
to any single person, and which are common to all 
the world, to the people as to the government, to 
opposition as to power. They are those which have 
ruined us, and for so many years have led France on 
from revolution to revolution. 

" We are, in point of virtue, aptness, and political 
intelligence, far less advanced than we believe ; we 
flatter ourselves mutually and incessantly, to the 
great damage of society at large. 

" I speak of virtue at the risk of repeating* a mere 
common-place term, which ceases to be one when it is 
forgotten. Liberty requires virtue. Nations are not 
capable of self-government except when minds can 
strongly govern themselves. I do not think I calum- 
niate my own time when I say 5 that what it is 
specially deficient in, is, the steady self-government 
of minds. Moral virtue has not perished amongst 
us, but moral faith totters within us. In our days, 
we meet with much honesty of conduct and much 
weakness of conscience. The ordinary practice of 



176 OUR ERRORS AXD OUR HOPE?. 

life is superior to the ordinary principles. There is 
much danger when the temptations of liberty go on 
increasing from day to day. We have paid too little 
attention to this moral evil of our age: we have 
evinced too much confidence in the empire of habit, 
of well understood interest, of legal repression, and 
of all external curbs. We have suffered ourselves to 
be lulled to sleep by the appearance of order. It 
may happen that order reigns on the surface of 
society, while at the same time, corrupting ideas and 
perverse sentiments expand themselves in the heart, 
and penetrate into those internal regions where gan- 
grene rapidly wins its way if not repulsed by religion 
and- virtue. We have left the public too much ex- 
posed to this secret contagion, to debasing spectacles, 
to pernicious reading, to bad examples, and to all 
evil influences. We have reckoned too much on 
national morality, while at the same time doing too 
little to defend or strengthen it. Liberty has wanted 
this counterpoise, 

u We have also placed too much confidence in our 
aptitude and enlightenment for a system of political 
liberty. Up to this time, the political education of 
France has been acquired in two schools, books and 
revolutions; masters either pernicious or unequal 



OUR ERRORS AXD OUR HOPES. 177 

to the task of teaching a people to govern themselves. 
To those who feed upon them, books impart a style 
of political intelligence, to a certain extent presump- 
tuous and vague, and which qualifies them more to 
dogmatise and criticise than to decide and act. The 
influence of books, moreover, can only exercise 
itself on the surface, and over an extremely thin 
layer of society; we know not exactly the limited 
extent to which they penetrate, and at what point 
the mass of the population remains unacquainted with 
the ideas and knowledge which can only be propa- 
gated through that channel. It thus happens that 
when literature is the principal agent of political 
ideas, sympathy and intellectual equilibrium are 
broken between the higher classes and the people ; 
they speedily cease to understand or think in 
common. Eevolutions are a more extended and 
a more effectual school. They supply political les- 
sons which penetrate in every quarter, but fail to 
carry everywhere true and patriotic lights. They 
expand and sharpen minds, while leading them from 
profitable paths ; they corrupt, or chill, or ener- 
vate hearts; they propagate the worship of force 
and fraud, not that of justice and liberty; they 
engender libertines ready to profit by everything 

N 



i 



178 OUR ERRORS AST) OUR HOPES. 

cowards obedient to everything, and honest men dis- 
couraged by everything, who, in the day of trial 
shrink from public responsibility and shut themselves 
up in their private interests, believing that they are 
incapable of directing the affairs of their country. 
We compromise our own destiny when we consign 
all care of it to generations so little or so ill-prepared 
for government and liberty. 

u We deceived ourselves as to the conditions of our 
government, as also on the moral strength and 
political progress of our society. On the day after a 
revolution, and in the midst of an attack of revolu- 
tionary fever, we endeavoured to found a monarchy, a 
free monarchy, and at our first steps in this great work 
we found ourselves in presence Qf a monarchical party 
profoundly divided; to defend power and law, we 
could only avail ourselves of a portion of the natural 
army of power and law. We were not discouraged ; 
we did not, in consequence of the extreme difficulty, 
voluntarily circumscribe our duties and our ambition ; 
we persisted in defending order, in respecting and 
enlarging liberty. As long as social peril was immi- 
nent, as long as the security and just interests of 
common life were menaced, the new power was found 
equal to its task; against its enemies of the old 



OUR ERRORS AND OUR HOPES. 179 

system it opposed the forces of the revolution, and 
against its revolutionary foes, the forces of all the 
alarmed men of probity. But when the question 
of public order was settled, the question of political 
order returned ; from the day on which the new 
monarchy appeared to be established, a great gap 
revealed itself in its foundations. 

"I have constantly sustained the cause of the 
middle classes, which is my own, and in our con- 
tests I have had the honour of carrying their flag. 
"Why should I hesitate to say to them, what, in 1843, 
M. Boyer Collard said to me, on my own account : 
c You carry on a sound, rational, and honest policy ; 
you do yourself much honour but you will not suc- 
ceed; you have against you the legitimists and the 
revolutionists, fire from above and below ; this is too 
much at a time.' The middle classes have reason and 
justice on their side when they claim a considerable 
share, a preponderating influence in the government 
of France; but alone, they are unequal to govern. 
Twice, in 1789 and 1830, their victory deceived 
them ; they thought that at the same time they could 
attack above and resist below, that they could destroy 
and establish. Experience has falsified their confi- 
dence. The present age does not admit this double 

N 2 



180 OUR ERRORS AND OUR HOPES. 

triumph; the anarchical ferment which traverses 
modern society is too vast and profound not to over- 
whelm conservative strength when divided. Its 
union and common action is scarcely enough to op- 
pose successful resistance. 

" I say resistance ; for, let what may be said to the 
contrary, resistance is the leading mission of govern- 
ment ; it is essentially to repress unlicensed desires 
that government is established. But that accom- 
plished, there is yet more to be done; it has to 
second and direct the development of man and society 
in every sense, in moral and material order. Man 
is not placed on earth merely to live there, but to 
increase, to display, according to the laws and designs 
of Grod, the riches and resources of his nature. It is 
the object and condition of government to march at the 
head of humanity in the accomplishment of the great 
destinies of man. After long hesitations, serious mis- 
takes, painful reverses, and intolerable alarms, society 
may throw itself into the arms of power, demanding 
only order, as the sine qua non of its existence ; bat 
it does not long content itself with such a limited am- 
bition ; its active forces recruit themselves by repose ; 
it springs up again ; it aspires to resume the noble 
work of which it had become so weary, and to this it 



OUR ERRORS AND OUR HOPES. 181 

must be conducted by its government. If the govern- 
ment neither will nor can do this, if it is incapable 
of lending itself to this mission of life and social pro- 
gress, it soon ceases also to be capable of its mission 
of order and public security ; and thus government 
and nation either separate by violent convulsions, or 
fall together into the apathy which announces decline 
and prepares death. 

<* Let the middle classes once more receive with 
patience this truth from a devoted friend ; alone, 
they are utterly unequal to progress as to resistance, 
to liberty as to order. They play an eminent part in 
society; they exercise intellectual professions, and 
derive profit from material riches. They thus ac- 
complish two important points ; they perpetually sup- 
port and renew social activity ; they develop and 
bring to light the personal merit of new men, and 
place them in their just position. It is from them 
especially, and from their labours, that the ascending 
movement and expansive force of society emanate. 
But in acting this great character, the middle classes 
frequently run upon two rocks ; at one time, yielding 
themselves up to impulse, they rush impetuously 
through passion or improvidence into experiments 
utterly opposed to their true advantage ; at another, 

N 3 



182 OUR EEEOES AND OUE HOPES. 

wearied and alarmed by the crises they have them- 
selves brought on, they become disgusted with politics, 
retire exclusively into domestic life, and seek only 
security for the private interests to which they con- 
fine their care. Alternately they rouse themselves to 
action, or submit passively, either exacting too much 
from, or yielding too submissively to, power; and 
thus order and liberty suffer equally from their rapid 
fluctuations. These dispositions of the middle classes 
require a counterpoise to restrain their enthusiasm 
and to strengthen their weakness ; and this counter- 
poise is only to be found in the political influence of 
the classes whose fortune is more determined and 
their position more fixed, whose thoughts and time 
are less absorbed in the labour of personal interests, 
and who, bringing naturally to public affairs more 
methodical perseverance, are less liable to shift so 
suddenly from opposition to docility, and from docility 
to opposition. 

"When it is considered desirable to excite the 
discontent or suspicions of the middle classes, people 
speak of aristocratic tendencies and a return to the 
old system. I have no desire to confront sentiments, 
the empire of which I am well aware of; neither 
can I resolve to remain so silent on the subject as 



OUR EKROES AND OUE HOPES. 183 

to abstain from probing things to the centre, and 
showing them as they are : I respect my country 
too much not to deal with it as frankly as with 
myself. I shall therefore repeat here what I re- 
cently said on this particular topic. 

" When we examine human society in all places 
and times, through all the variety of its organization, 
government, extent, and duration, its species and 
degrees of civilisation, we shall find in all three, 
types of social condition ever essentially the same, 
although under widely distinct forms, and differently 
distributed : 

"Men living on the revenue of their property, 
either landed or movable, estates, or capital in 
money, without seeking to increase it by personal 
labour : 

" Men devoted to the cultivation or increase by 
personal labour of the property they possess, whether 
landed or movable, estates or capital, in money : 

"And men living by the produce of their labour, 
without either estates or capital. 

" These varieties and inequalities in the social 
condition of men are not accidental or special facts, 
applicable to any particular time or country ; they 
are universal facts, which produce themselves na- 

N 4 



184 OUR ERRORS AXD OUR HOPES. 

turally throughout all human society, in the midst 
of the most opposite circumstances and under the 
impress of the most varied laws 

" What is the true interpretation, the real bearing 
of these facts ? Can we find in them the old classi- 
fications of society ? Would the old denominations 
of policy be applicable to them ? Do they comprise 
an aristocracy in presence of a democracy, or rather 
a nobility, a middle class, and the popular masses ? 
Do these diversities and inequalities of social and 
political condition form, or tend to form, a state of 
society hierarchically classified, and analogous to 
those previously existing in the world ? 

"No, certainly not. The words aristocracy, de- 
mocracy, nobility, citizenship, hierarchy, do not 
exactly correspond with the facts which constitute 
modern French society, neither do they express those 
facts with sufficient accuracy. 

" On the other hand, what is there in this society 
except citizens equal amongst themselves, and no 
classes really distinct ; or, rather, distinctions and 
inequalities without political importance, nothing 
more than an extended and uniform democracy 
which seeks to satisfy itself in a republic at the risk 
of finding repose only in a despotism ? 



OUR ERROES AXD OUR HOPES. 185 

a Nothing more. Both conclusions equally mis- 
represent the actual state of our society. Ve must 
shake off the yoke of words and learn to look on 
facts as they really are. France is, at the same 
time, extremely new and full of the past. Under 
the empire of the principles of unity and equality 
which preside in her organization, she combines 
social conditions and political situations profoundly 
different and unequal. There is no hierarchical 
classification, but there are different classes. There 
is no aristocracy, properly so called, but there is 
something more than democracy. The true elements, 
essential and distinct, of French society, such as 
I have just described them, may oppose and weaken 
each other, but they cannot produce mutual de- 
struction or annihilation; they resist and survive 
all the contests in which they engage, all the mi- 
series they reciprocally inflict. Their existence is 
a fact beyond their power to abolish. Let them 
then unreservedly accept this fact. Let them live 
together and in peace. The liberty as well as the 
repose, the dignity and the prosperity, the greatness 
and security of France are only to be purchased at 
this cost.* 

* Of Democracy in France (1849), pp. 76, 78, 99, 101. 



186 OUR ERRORS AST) OUR HOPES. 

" France has paid dearly for forgetting this ne- 
cessity. The classes formerly and the classes re- 
cently predominating fell by turns into the same 
fatal error ; by turns they suffered themselves to 
believe that, because they once triumphed, they 
were alone sufficient for all the great interests of 
society, for resistance and progress, for order and 
liberty ; and, stricken in their disunion by the same 
impotence, they have by turns seen order and liberty, 
resistance and progress perish equally in their 
hands. 

" I have enumerated our errors, as I believe, with- 
out exaggeration or concealment. They are great 
in themselves, and great in their practical conse- 
quences. This will be clearly seen ; are we therefore 
to despair of our age and our cause ? 

"No one is farther from such a decision than I 
am. 

" This would be to abandon hopelessly our whole 
history, the entire activity and destiny of France, 
or, I should rather say, of Europe for fifteen cen- 
turies. 

u The present age is not a deviation from the 
past, an unforeseen accident, a strange inconsistency, 
a disease which comes casually to disturb the course 



OUR ERRORS A^D OUR HOPES. 187 

of a strong and flourishing health. We travel for 
fifteen centuries in the same paths, in which, in our 
own days, we have made such rapid advances and 
have encountered such heavy falls. 

"A principle, an idea, a sentiment, as it is popularly 
called, hovers during fifteen ages over all European 
societies, — over French society in particular, — and 
presides at their development ; the sentiment of the 
dignity and of the rights of every man, on his simple 
claim as man, and of the duty of extending more 
and more to all men the benefits of justice, sym- 
pathy, and liberty. 

* Justice, sympathy, and liberty are not new facts 
in the world ; they have not been invented within 
the last fifteen centuries. From the first day of 
creation, Grod implanted in man their seed and ne- 
cessity. They have held their place and exercised 
their empire in all countries and in all times, in the 
bosom of all human associations. But before the 
birth of Christian Europe, fixed and nearly insur- 
mountable limits marked or narrowly restrained the 
sphere of justice, sympathy, and liberty. Here, 
nationality ; elsewhere, race, caste, servile origin, 
religion, colour, interdicted to an immense number 
of men, all access to these first benefits of social 



188 OUR ERRORS AXD OUR HOPES. 

life. Amongst the most distinguished nations, justice, 
sympathy, and liberty were denied without scruple 
to three fourths of the people. The most enlight- 
ened minds saw in this spoliation nothing more 
than a natural and necessary fact, an inherent 
condtion of the social state. 

" It is pre-eminently Christianity in principle and 
practice which has expelled this iniquity from men's 
thoughts, and extended to all mankind the right of 
justice, sympathy, and liberty, until then confined 
to a small number and subjected to inexorable con- 
ditions. It was said of a great philosopher that the 
human race had lost their rights and that he restored 
them ; an excessive and almost idolatrous piece of 
flattery. It was not Montesquieu, but Jesus Christ 
who restored to humanity its due privileges. Jesus 
Christ came to raise up man upon earth at the time 
that he redeemed him for eternity. The unity of 
Grod amongst the Jews, the unity of man re-es- 
tablished amongst Christians, — these are the com- 
manding features which reveal divine action in 
man's life. 

" This restoration of man's unity in the Christian 
world has neither been a rapid, nor a pure work, and 
much is yet wanting to its universal accomplishment. 



OUR ERRORS AXD OUR HOPES. 189 

Material interests, unlicensed passions, egotism, 
pride, indifference, violence, the necessities of the 
moment, the combinations of policy, have fettered, 
slackened, and polluted the development of the Chris- 
tian idea, but it has never yielded or disappeared; 
ever present and struggling, it has taken into its 
service the most opposite instruments ; at one time 
the Church, at another the sovereign ; here the 
nobles, there the citizens, and elsewhere the mul- 
titude ; to-day power, to-morrow liberty, have con- 
stituted themselves champions for the expansion of 
justice and sympathy, to the advantage of all human 
creatures. By choice or by force, from duty or from 
calculation, the whole world has in turn lent a hand 
to this great work ; all ages, whether learned or ig- 
norant, pious or unbelieving, have caused it to make 
steps in advance more or less toilsome or rapid. It 
has filled our history, and at every epoch has been 
looked upon as the most signal symptom of the 
progress of civilization, and even as civilization 
itself. 

" The public sentiment has not deceived itself in 
giving it this name, and facts remarkably confirm 
it. In countries where Christian conviction has 
been boldly developed, in proportion as this common 



190 OUR ERRORS AND OUR HOPES. 

right of humanity has spread and applied itself to a 
greater number of men, so has society increased in 
power, in activity, in fruitfulness, in prosperity, and 
in glory. Abysses have been met with in this career 
of Europe, and, far from avoiding, she has more than 
once precipitated herself into them ; she has com- 
mitted many mistakes, faults, and crimes ; good and 
evil have mingled together in lamentable confusion ; 
bitter and legitimate reproaches may be applied to 
our civilization ; we can readily point out fatal wan- 
derings in its ideas and acts ; government and people, 
pious men and philosophers, aristocrats and demo- 
crats, conservatives and liberals of all countries and 
ages, have before God formidable accounts to render ; 
and history has a right to demand them here, and to 
speak the truth of the dead for the instruction and 
welfare of the living. Xo epoch, no event, no sys- 
tem, no party can justly complain of being thus 
severely interrogated and judged; and what am I 
doing now when I probe, without mitigation, the 
errors of our fathers and our own ? But this se- 
verity once exercised, our mistakes and our faults 
once acknowledged, these are the truths which 
endure. All Europe, and France in particular, has 
moved on during fifteen centuries in the same paths 



OUR ERRORS AXD OUR HOPES. 191 

of enfranchisement and general progress. These 
paths have conducted the nations which have en- 
tered into them with the most determined resolu- 
tion to that high degree of power, prosperity, and 
greatness, which we call, and are entitled to call, 
modern civilization. This civilization is pre-emi- 
nently the fruit of that lofty idea that every man, 
on his simple claim as man, has a right to justice, 
sympathy, and liberty. This idea has its source in 
the Gospel; Jesus Christ inducted it into man's 
heart, to pass from thence into the social system. 

" Grod does not deceive the human race. Nations 
do not constantly deceive themselves in the course 
of a long destiny : the abyss lies not at the end of 
fifteen centuries of ascending movement. What 
during so many ages has been a principle of life 
and progress, is not to-day a cause of decline and 
death. 

" Another fact ought also to convince us of this ; 
and the more so that it warns while it encourages, and 
comprises as much danger as hope. 

" Our ruling passion, not precisely that of the 
present day, but that of 1789, and of our age in 
general, is ambition ; ambition unlimited in thought 
and application, an ardent desire for change, novelty. 



192 OUR ERRORS AXD OUR HOPES. 

and progress. In moral and material order, in ideas, 
institutions, and manners, the spirit of innovation 
excites and carries men away ; the past displeases 
them, they are dissatisfied with the present, they 
appeal to the future ; at one moment, a future which 
they conceive and regulate according to their own 
fantasy : at another, an obscure, unknown future, no 
matter what may be its outline, provided only that 
it is new, and different from the established order, 
which appears hateful or insipid, oppressive or ex- 
hausted. This thirst for novelty, this fever of ex- 
pectation, has engendered itself, for nearly a century, 
in all senses, under all forms, and in every gradation 
of society ; it has given birth to those innumerable 
attempts to transform France and the world, to all 
those systems, revolutions, wars, conquests, consti- 
tutions, dynasties, and phantoms, which have flitted 
on in succession without satisfying or arresting us 
for more than a few days. At one time at the sum- 
mit, at another amongst the intermediate regions of 
society, in the bosom of intellectual leisure, or in 
the activity of business, this enthusiasm for novelty 
and the future has taken its origin and support ; and 
when the classes which at first encouraged and par- 
ticipated in it have either become undeceived or 



OUE EEEOES AXD OUB HOPES. 193 

tired ; when they learned from experience that they 
looked for too much, and were now anxious only 
for rest, they discovered that this last desire was 
also futile, that the ferment had descended to the 
popular masses, and that amongst them, too, in that 
vast and obscure region, ambition, the ascending 
movement, the blind or reasoning impulse towards 
the future had taken possession of men, and urged 
them into paths utterly unknown. In presence of 
this menacing fact, we feel moved and disturbed : we 
fluctuate between sympathy and alarm ; we yield and 
resist ; concession, explosion, and repression succeed 
each other rapidly : each for a moment has played 
its part, but without reaching the source or end of 
things, without stifling or satisfying the spirit of am- 
bition and innovation which circulates in our veins. 

u Herein are assuredly comprised a serious evil 
and danger, but no symptom of decay ; decay reveals 
itself by very different facts and signs. 

u After fifty years of civil war, of fearful perse- 
cutions, crimes, and sufferings, the Eoman republic 
fell; the Empire established itself in the name of 
a pressing, evident necessity, as the onlv means of 
restoring to the Eoman world, internal peace and 
the security of private life, the first and most 

o 



194 OUE EEKOES AND OUR HOPES. 

essential object of the social state. But the Empire did 
not satisfy the wants and wishes of all the Eomans. 
Its despotism and corruption, its adulation of the 
multitude, the perpetual falsehood of its appear- 
ances and language, deeply wounded the enlightened 
and haughty spirits, still numerous in the senate, 
amongst the equestrian order, the lawyers, the 
scholars, and the higher classes of that ancient so- 
ciety. All these required, in government and people, 
more liberty, dignity, and virtue. Where did they 
seek for them ? In the past alone, in a return to 
the old Eepublic, to its maxims, laws, and manners. 
They neither desired nor conceived anything more, 
or less, or different. Let us ask the most glorious in- 
terpreters of that epoch ; I shall name but two, 
Tacitus and Marcus Aurelius : both are sad, pro- 
foundly sad ; they deplore, they despise their time, 
but they neither meditate nor conceive anything for 
its reformation ; we cannot trace in their minds a 
glimpse of a future, or any perspective of a new 
moral or political order ; the Eepublic, the ancient 
Borne which is no more, and cannot be resuscitated, 
is the single dream of their thoughts ; they have 
reminiscences, but no new ideas; regrets, but no 
hopes. 



OUR ERRORS AXD OUR HOPES. 195 

" In a remote corner of the Empire, in the bosom 
of the most despised of the inferior colonies sub- 
jected to its laws, a small association was formed, in 
the most profound obscurity, and the humblest con- 
dition, but which God inspired with the loftiest and 
the most unheard of ambition ; — the ambition of 
reforming man himself, all mankind throughout the 
world, and for all ages. There lay the power, for 
therein was comprised the new inspiration and im- 
pulse towards the future. 

" Sterility is a certain symptom of decline, sterility 
of minds and hearts, when man neither plans, hopes, 
nor pursues anything better or more beautiful than 
what he sees and possesses ; when human generations 
only live and die in the present, like the generations 
of leaves which shoot and fall, society dies also ; its 
inherent greatness and strength, if it has any, serve 
only to prolong its prostration and agony. Gibbon 
wrote the history of Eome, from Augustus to the tak- 
ing of Constantinople by Mahomet II., and he entitled 
it, ' History of the Decline and Fall of the Soman 
Empire/ and he was right ; the Roman Empire 
occupied fifteen centuries in its fall; but throughout 
that long period it was continually on the decline, 
even while completing the conquest and regulating 

O 2 



196 CUE EKROKS AND OUB HOPES. 

the administration of the world. In that vast body 
there was no longer moral ambition or fecundity : 
the soul had departed. Either in collective society 
or in individual men, the future is the life of the 
soul. 

" What will be the future of our present society ? 
Xo one can tell: neither do I believe that any human 
eye is sufficiently piercing to unravel it. But, be- 
yond all doubt, we have participated in one of the 
most expanded movements of human ambition, in 
one of the boldest impulses towards the future, of 
which the world has ever been the theatre. Our age 
maybe reproached with many faults, but certainly 
not with apathy of mind and heart. God forbid that 
I should look upon this merit as sufficient to cure 
and repair all our mistakes ! The future is not se- 
cured to men simply because they ardently desire 
and pursue it. Ideas, projects, and hopes may 
spring up and crowd in their souls without substan- 
tial accomplishment, and may leave them far from 
the goal they aspire to reach. It is little to think, 
to imagine, to dream, to desire ; severer duties are 
imposed on us, and we are called to a greater share 
of responsibility in our own destinies. We must 
learn to act, to wait : to act and wait with intelli- 



CUE EKROES AXD OUE HOPES. 197 

gence, perseverance, and virtue, with submission to 
those laws of (rod under the control of which our 
lives pass, and our activity displays itself. Already 
more than once, in the history of the human race, 
brilliant hopes have miscarried, great aspirations have 
led to nothing, epochs teeming with productive seeds, 
have remained barren through man's fault. Are we 
destined to undergo one of these sad and humiliating" 
reverses ? This is the problem we have to solve. 
Let us not natter ourselves that we can escape from 
its burden ; if decline is our lot, we have made it 
for ourselves ; it has not descended to us from our 
fathers. To us will appertain the honour of carrying 
' to a still greater height the civilization they have 
bequeathed to us, or the shame of suffering it to fall 
and perish in our hands. Many tremble lest this 
melancholy fate should be reserved for us ; and in 
support of these apprehensions they allege the futi- 
lity of our efforts daring sixty years to establish 
amongst us that system of legal order and political 
liberty, that active and efficacious intervention of 
the country in its government, which in 1789 was 
incontestabiy the wish and hope of our fathers. We 
have sought this system through every description 
of path, under the most opposing standards ; we have 

o 3 



198 OUE ERRORS AXD OUR HOPES. 

caught a glimpse of, and have reached it ; we have 
held it in possession ; it fell ; can it ever, after so 
many trials, revive again from this mischief and mis- 
fortune ? 

" I reject all pretence of raising this formidable 
complaint alone and pre-eminently against the con- 
stitutional system. WTiat system has not failed 
during the last sixty years ? Absolute power fell 
like liberty, the conquests of war like those of peace. 
It would ill become opposite systems to treat each 
other with mutual haughtiness ; they have all under- 
gone the same reverses ; they have all, in turn, been 
enveloped and carried away in the storm which for 
sixty years has swept over Europe. Seek for other 
weapons than its fall against the constitutional sys- 
tem ; it could return with interest the blows it would 
thus receive. Amongst all the systems it endured 
the longest* 

" Even in falling it has not entirely lost its em- 
pire, and some of its best benefits have survived its 
errors and reverses. Since 1848 we have witnessed 
the most formidable crises ; we have passed through 
I know not how many revolutions, contests, and in- 
testine commotions. Why have not these commo- 
tions, contests, and revolutions produced an infinitely 



OUR ERRORS AXD OUR HOPES. 199 

greater decree of mischief? Why have they been 
restrained within narrower limits than public alarm 
anticipated ? Is it not evidently through the sur- 
viving influence of the system of legal order,, of jus- 
tice and liberty, which preceded them ? The prin- 
ciples and examples of that system vindicated their 
power in the midst of its ruins : it has verified the 
beautiful saying of the Indian sage : 6 Be like the 
sandal-wood, which perfumes the axe that strikes it. 5 
66 There are two powers which I am far from hold- 
ing as infallible, but which deserve to be often be- 
lieved in and always listened to : — the masses and 
the chosen spirits, the instinctive sentiment of society 
and the reflective thought of its natural heads. Let 
both be interrogated. The masses are indifferent 
and silent ; they have readily resigned their pre- 
tensions and habits ; they have experienced the 
abuses of liberty and the necessity of repose; but 
they are, at the bottom, less changed than they ap- 
pear. The middle classes have not ceased to esteem 
and desire the securities of the constitutional system ; 
and amongst these multitudes, so submissive and 
restrained, the same passions and dreams are in per- 
petual fermentation. Leave the masses alone. In- 
quire the thoughts and dispositions, I will not say of 

o 4 



200 OUR ERRORS AXD OUR HOPES. 

the men long enlisted under a flag which honour 
commands them to guard, but of the young and ardent 
spirits now entering into the world. Can it be be- 
lieved that they have renounced those hopes of 
political activity and freedom which filled the lives 
of their fathers ? Enter their ranks and listen to 
them. They come from all points of the horizon : 
they differ in origin, profession, social position, 
creeds, and tendencies. All the old parties have 
amongst them descendants and representatives. We 
shall find there conservatives, liberals, democrats, 
and republicans. We shall hear discussions on the 
vices and merits of the constitutional system, as it 
was understood and practised amongst us. Some 
reproach it with having been too impatient ; others 
accuse it of too much timidity : others, again, charge 
it with having transformed itself into a parliamentary 
system incompatible with our national manners and 
traditions. Both for political liberty and represen- 
tative government they require new forms and con- 
ditions. These are serious questions, substantial 
discords which might become important. But above 
all these questions and discords one common senti- 
ment rises and soars, — an aspiration for political life, 
a desire to march and advance in the same paths of 



OUR ERRORS AXD OUR HOPES. 201 

liberal civilization in which, during a long series of 
ages, successive generations of Frenchmen have al- 
ternated so many attempts, wanderings, hesitations, 
halts, returns, and falls ; and, balancing one against 
the other, so many conquests and advances. 

" If I turn my eyes from France upon Europe, 
and from nations upon governments, I find in all 
quarters the same tendency, and the same fact under 
the most opposite appearances. In countries and 
under systems diametrically distinct from each other, 
in the midst of contrary events, despite the neces- 
sities and embarrassments of contemporaneous po- 
licy, and in most unequal degrees, the same spirit of 
social ambition, of general development, of expanded 
sympathy and liberties, possesses and urges all Eu- 
rope in advance. And this spirit, which we call new, 
is identically the same which for fifteen centuries has 
animated and fertilized European society. It is the 
spirit of the past as well as of the future. It hovers 
over our misfortunes and our faults, exactly as it 
came to us through the misfortunes and faults of 
our ancestors. 

"Let us turn from our discouragements and blind- 
nesses 5 our interested reserves and self-complacencies. 
Let us be serious and sincere, and look on things as 



202 OUR ERRORS AXD OUR HOPES. 

they exist, at home and abroad. We have fancied 
ourselves better than we are ; we have forgotten the 
evil inherent in our nature, and consequently the 
necessity of struggling manfully and incessantly 

against the enemy we carry within us. We have 
fancied ourselves more powerful than we are : we 
have mistaken not only the limits of our power, but 
the rights of the Sovereign Power which governs us 
and the world. We have disregarded the eternal 
laws which (rod has made for us. and we have for- 
mally pretended to substitute in their places our 
own ephemeral institutions. We have persuaded 
ourselves that we are more advanced than we really 
are in the paths of civilization and libert}^. Occupied 
in the great and rugged task of founding a free go- 
vernnient, we did not sufficiently estimate the diffi- 
culties and conditions. We flattered ourselves too 
readily that we could do this alone. We presumed 
too much upon our knowledge and our strength. We 
thought too lightly of the general ignorance and 
anarchy which knocked at our doors, of the time 
required to enlighten that ignorance, and of the 
allies that were wanted to struggle against that 
anarchy. These are mistakes we may acknowledge 
without reproach to any one. for we all fell into 



OUR ERRORS AND OUR HOPES. 2C3 

them alike. These are the true causes of our errors 
aud reverses. They contain matter to abate our 
pride, but nothing to annihilate our hope. Our 
disease is one of those which cure themselves when 
they are thoroughly recognized and sharply felt. Let 
us persevere in our object ; it is the just right, and 
for fifteen centuries has been the laborious effort of 
Christian Europe. Let us neither be surprised nor 
alarmed at the obstacles, delays, turnings, and wind- 
ings of the road ; success, in great undertakings, is 
always more difficult and more dearly purchased 
than human thoughts imagine ; and Grod, who pro- 
mises all the rest to # those who begin by asking for 
wisdom, will not exempt them from endurance and 
combat. Above all, let us hasten to emerge from 
the old tracks into which we have been driven by 
the revolutionary spirit; they would ever lead us 
into the same whirlpools." 



204 



CHAP. XXIV. 

CONCLUSION. 

Shall we be found equal to this imperious necessity ? 
Shall we escape from the ruts of revolution to walk 
in the ways of justice and liberty according to right? 
This is the question of our epoch ; a question of 
external as well as of internal pdlicy, equally civil and 
religious, yesterday French, to-day Italian, and to- 
morrow European. Whatever may be its special 
object or theatre, wherever this, question arises, it 
involves the fate of all Christian society ; the contest 
lies between the spirit of revolution and the spirit of 
Christianit} 7 . The essential feature of the Christian 
spirit is respect for rule and right; for all rights, 
the rights of Grod as well as those of man, of govern- 
ments as of nations, of the past as of the future. 
The dominant and permanent character of the re- 
volutionary spirit is, on the contrary, passion ; at 
one time the passion of license, at another the passion 



CONCLUSION. 205 

of a fixed and exclusive idea,, before which all the 
rights that interfere with it vanish, and to which all 
means are suitable for its gratification, cunning as 
well as violence; at one time menace, at another 
seduction ; to-day an attack on power, to-morrow a 
contempt for liberty. Italy at this moment presents 
both spectacles. In the kingdom of Naples, after 
expelling the King, a foreign army makes war against 
I know not exactly what portion, but certainly a 
considerable portion of the Neapolitan people, which 
looks upon the Piedmontese as foreigners, and has 
no desire for their rule. To put down its resistance, 
prisoners of war are exiled, imprisoned, and shot, and 
towns are set on fire. In the Eoman question these 
proceedings are not current ; France covers Borne 
with her shield. Other ways are tried; they appeal to 
the Catholic public, to the Pope himself-: an attempt 
is made to intimidate him — what do I say ? — to 
persuade him. He is urged to submit to the times, 
to resign himself to necessity, to accept the trans- 
formations proposed to him. They fear to excite 
too much commotion by laying violent hands on 
him; they call upon him to abdicate, to spare his 
enemies the embarrassment of dethroning him. 
I am nothing in the government , of my own 



206 CONCLUSION. 

country ; it belongs not to me to give it advice ; but 
I may address myself to my country and its govern- 
ment, to point out to them the errors and dangers 
towards which, in my opinion, a complaisant adhesion 
and an improvident yielding to this policy, alter- 
nately coarse and hypocritical, would infallibly lead 
them ; and which, far indeed from promoting, com- 
promises the good cause in Italy, and plunges 
Christian society into a lamentable perturbation, the 
certain prelude to an anarchy which we may soon 
see alternately unchained or compressed within un- 
imaginable fetters. It depends on honest, sensible 
men, and true Christians to rescue themselves and 
their children from these melancholy chances. From 
all our experiences and sufferings, whether general 
or individual, there remains to us this grand result, 
that the cherished and necessary truths of our time 
are disengaged from the clouds through which they 
had to pass, and are palpable to almost every eye. 
On the rights of human conscience and liberty, on 
the justice due to all, on the duties of sympathy 
which all may claim, we are now in assured pos- 
session of maxims of Christian origin as well as of 
philosophical acquirement, predominating maxims 



COXCLUSIOX. 207 

although still sometimes disputed, and which even 
those who dispute them could not long violate with 
impunity. In the midst of all the dissensions which 
continue to agitate us, there is now in the great 
majority of minds as much light, and in the great 
majority of hearts as much equity, as is necessary to 
satisfy the social wants and legitimate desires of our 
epoch. But these lights and good intentions avail 
nothing if confined within themselves. They must 
pass into the practice of life and the conduct of public 
affairs. The influence of the public upon govern- 
ment, whether to direct or restrain, can alone secure 
this result. Christians or philosophers, Catholics or 
Protestants, Conservatives or Liberals, whether as 
regards internal or external questions, the relations 
of the State with the Church or with other States, — 
it is necessary that all who in their hearts respect 
common rights, and wish for liberty according to 
right, should have the courage to proclaim openly 
this tutelary respect, and then to lay down a rule for 
their own conduct which may also become the rule 
of authority. Under these conditions, false ideas 
and anarchical or tyrannical passions will be rendered 
powerless ; Christian society, religious and civil, will 



20S COXCLUSIOX. 

be saved. But let us not deceive ourselves ; it is 
in danger : and the provident union, the free speech, 
and the active courage of sound minds and honest 
hearts are indispensable to its preservation. 



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